Kəpəz

Founded on 1 July 1959, the side has worn four different names as the city around it changed — Tekstilshchik in its earliest years, then Dinamo, then Taraggi, then Dinamo again after Kirovabad reverted to the name Ganja. It settled on Kəpəz, after the mountain that overlooks the region, in 1989, and dropped it only once, for six seasons after 2005, before taking it back.

Kəpəz won three championships in that period, and the 1997/98 title stands apart: 22 wins and 4 draws, no defeats. Four domestic cups followed alongside it, the last in 1999/2000, the same season the club finished as championship runner-up.

The years since have swung harder. Financial trouble sent the club down to the second tier in 2007, while it was still playing under the name FC Gəncə, and the wait to get back to the top flight ran to 2011. A second relegation followed in 2013–14, a third in 2019–20, each time for the same reason, each time reversed — the most recent return came for the 2020/21 season. Somewhere in that stretch of turnover the club reached a mark few reach at all: in 2024, forward Victor Braga scored Kəpəz's 1,000th goal in Azerbaijani league competition.

The team plays its home matches at the Ganja City Stadium, a ground holding just over 15,000, in the yellow-and-blue that has marked the club through every rename. It is still where Ganja comes to watch the closest thing the city has to Baku's rivals.