Kaspiy

Winning the Kazakhstan First League in 2025 put Aqtau back in the top flight. The club had gone up that way once before, in 1994, then spent three decades mostly near the top of the second tier without getting over the line — runners-up in 2000, again in 2006, again in 2019, third in 2024 before finally going one better the following season.

The side began in 1962 as Stroitel, a builders' team in a city on the Caspian shore, and changed its name almost as often as its league. Trud carried it through the Soviet decades; then came Aktau, Munaishy, Mangistau, and, from 2002, Caspiy. The trophies from the early years belong to the amateur competitions of the Kazakh SSR: the republic's cup in 1964, then again in 1977 and 1978, with the championship added in that last season.

The 2021 rebrand tied the colours to what the region lives on. Blue for the sea the club is named after, black for the oil. White completes the set.

Zhas Kanat holds 5,000 after its reconstruction, which makes it one of the smaller grounds in the Premier League and a long flight from most of the opposition.

Aqtau sits at the far western edge of the country, and nearly every fixture is a journey. That geography shapes who the club measures itself against: the established sides of the top division — Kairat, Tobol, Aktobe, Ordabasy, Astana's neighbours Zhenis and Kaysar — are opponents Caspiy has met mostly in cup ties and promotion seasons rather than year after year. The closer rivalry is with Atyrau, the other club on the Caspian, from the region next door and built on the same industry.