Ñublense

Ñublense have spent recent seasons doing something unfamiliar for a club from Chillán: playing continental football. The Copa Libertadores came calling in 2023 and again in 2025. Both appearances built on the club's best-ever finish in the Primera División — runners-up in 2022. Three Copa Sudamericana campaigns, the first back in 2008, filled the years in between.

The club dates to 1916 and took its current name, Club de Deportes Ñublense, in 1942. Professional status arrived in 1959, with a debut in the Primera B. Financial trouble forced a rebrand as Ñuble Unido between 1979 and 1983, before the older name returned for good.

Home games are played at the Estadio Bicentenario Municipal Nelson Oyarzún Arenas, named for a coach who died of cancer in 1978 — on the same day his team beat Colo-Colo. The ground holds 12,000. It fell short of what the 2022 playoffs required, though, sending Ñublense's home leg to Concepción, where 18,487 turned out for the semi-final. Red shirts, a black away kit, and the nickname Diablos Rojos have stuck since.

Curicó Unido supplies the fiercest fixture, the Clásico del Maule, an edge sharpened by the 2004 Tercera División final Ñublense won on their way back into professional football. Matches with Cobreloa carry their own weight too, tracing to an incident in 2015.

A Copa Chile final in 2024 and a Supercopa final in 2021 both ended in defeat. What still eludes Ñublense, after titles in both the third and second tiers of Chilean football, is a Primera División championship.