Djoliba AC

Djoliba come into the new Malian Première Division campaign as champions, having taken the 2025–26 title.

None of that came from one bloodline of a club. Djoliba was assembled on 20 August 1960, when Africa Sport, left without a merger partner after other Bamako sides had already paired off, joined with Foyer du Soudan, a team that had already changed its name several times since the postwar years. Amadou Tall, Foyer du Soudan's general secretary, handled the negotiations. The new name came from the Bambara word for the Niger River.

Continental football has been less kind. The closest Djoliba has come to an African trophy was 2012, when they took AC Léopards to penalties in the CAF Confederation Cup final after the tie finished 3–3 on aggregate, and lost the shoot-out. A semi-final against Hearts of Oak in the 1967 African Cup of Champions Clubs sits further back in that same ledger of near misses.

Domestically the rivalry that matters is with Stade Malien, the Derby de Bamako, a fixture that splits along old lines: Djoliba drew its support from the city's working-class quarters, Stade Malien from its civil servants and intellectuals. Seydou Keita passed through Djoliba's ranks before his career took him to Europe.

The 2015 season cut against that record, when a league boycott and administrative disputes sent the club down to the second division; they were back in the top flight within a year. With the double now won and a new season under way, the task is straightforward enough: defend both titles.