Mayak Sarny

Mayak Sarny spent the autumn of 2026 doing something no regional amateur side from Rivne Oblast usually gets to do: playing a Round of 32 tie in the Ukrainian Cup against SC Poltava, a First League club. For a team that plays its football on a 3,500-seat ground in a town far from the professional circuit, that was the closest thing to a national moment.

Closer to home, the club has spent the past few seasons simply refusing to lose its grip on the Rivne region. The oblast championship has been won eight times since 2005, four of those in a row from 2023 to 2026.

Some of that run has a name attached to it. Vladyslav Kulach, who once played up front for Chornomorets Odesa, Vorskla Poltava and Zorya Luhansk, came back to Sarny not to finish out a career quietly but as player-coach. The club traces further back than his return, though — founded in 1980, long before any of this, at Stadion Mriya, still known locally as the Sarny municipal ground.

None of it has come with much publicity; there is no club website, only a page on VKontakte where results get posted after the fact.