Sporting Ceuta

This season finds Sporting Ceuta back in the Regional Preferente de Ceuta, the top regional tier, and having just come off winning it in 2024–25 — a result that pushed the club into the preliminary rounds of the Copa del Rey, where it drew UD Maracena. The ground, the Estadio José Benoliel, holds barely a thousand people.

The habit of winning that same regional title and then finding the door to promotion shut has followed the club for two decades. It happened first in 2003–04, when Sporting Ceuta topped the Preferente but could not move up to the Tercera División, and it happened again in 2012–13, when the title came round once more but the promotion slot belonged to AD Ceuta FC instead. Three regional championships now sit in the club's history, in 2004, 2013 and 2025, without one of them ever converting into a step up the pyramid.

Matches against AD Ceuta FC and Inter de Ceuta are the ones that matter locally, played out as the "derbi de Ceuta". Sporting carries the nickname "Los Caballas", shared loosely among the city's clubs, and wears black at home with white trim.

None of this continuity was guaranteed. The club stopped playing altogether in 1975, only two seasons after it started out in the Primera Regional de Ceuta, and stayed dormant until 2003. Even after that comeback it went quiet again from 2006 to 2012, and once more between 2016 and 2019.