Sturm GrazSK Sturm Graz, founded in 1909 in Graz, spent most of its history in the shadow of Vienna's giants before undergoing a transformation in the early 1990s that permanently changed Austrian football. Its architect was Bosnian coach Ivica Osim, who took charge of the club in 1994 and built a team from a young, inexperienced squad around an attacking, combination-based style of play — its heart was the so-called "magic triangle" of Ivica Vastic, Mario Haas and Hannes Reinmayr. Under his guidance, the Black-and-Whites claimed the club's first-ever Austrian championship in 1998, defended it a year later, and won the domestic cup three times (1996, 1997, 1999).
The most spectacular achievement of the Osim era, however, came in the UEFA Champions League, where Sturm reached the group stage three seasons running (1998, 1999, 2000) — a feat no other Austrian club has since matched. In the 1999–2000 season, the Graz side became the only Austrian representative ever to advance out of the group stage into the knockout round of Europe's most prestigious club competition. Earlier, in the 1970s and 1980s, Sturm had twice reached the quarter-finals of European competition — the Cup Winners' Cup in 1975–76 and the UEFA Cup in 1983–84, losing on both occasions after extra time to Nottingham Forest.
After years of drought, during which Red Bull Salzburg came to dominate Austrian football, the club experienced a second renaissance in the mid-2020s. In 2024, Sturm won its fourth championship in history, breaking a decade of Salzburg's near-monopoly, and defended the title a year later while completing the club's first domestic double in a quarter of a century, beating Rapid Wien 2-1 in the cup final. In total, the club now holds five Austrian championships (1998, 1999, 2011, 2024, 2025) and seven Austrian Cups, making Sturm one of the country's most decorated clubs outside Vienna. The 2024–25 season also brought only the club's fourth-ever qualification for the Champions League group stage.
Sturm play their home matches at the ground in the Liebenau district, now known as Merkur Arena, though older supporters still remember it under its original, short-lived name honouring Graz-born Arnold Schwarzenegger. The 2025–26 season, however, brought a return to a supporting role: the championship was claimed, for only the second time in its history, by LASK Linz, with the Black-and-Whites finishing as runners-up under new head coach Fabio Ingolitsch. Even so, the story of the club from Graz — from its working-class roots, through the Osim era, to its recent renaissance — remains one of the most distinctive narratives in Austrian football.
