Rustavi

Twice, promotion from Georgia's second tier has come down to a play-off, and twice Rustavi has lost it — beaten 1-3 by Telavi in 2019, then again 2-3 in 2024 after finishing the league runner-up. The title itself has come easier: three times champions of the second division since the club's founding, in 2016, 2017 and again in 2025. The best return in the top flight followed the 2017 title, a seventh-place finish in 2018.

None of this connects to the clubs that wore the city's name before it. Rustavi was formed on 3 July 2015 as a fresh legal entity, with no link to Metalurgi, later Gorda, later Olimpi, the sequence of names that had represented the city since 1948 and that collapsed under debt the same year this club began. Olimpi Rustavi had won the Georgian championship twice, in 2007 and 2010; those titles belong to a club that no longer exists, not to this one.

In the Georgian Cup, the David Kipiani Cup, the club has reached the quarter-final three times — in 2017, losing to Dinamo Tbilisi on penalties; in 2019, losing to Torpedo Kutaisi the same way; and again in 2025.

Home games are played at Poladi Stadium, reduced by a 2009 renovation from a capacity of 10,720 to 4,657 seats.

The 2025 second-division title puts Rustavi back in the top flight.