Shakhtyor Soligorsk Shakhtyor Soligorsk were a club whose entire history was closely tied to the local mining industry, and whose existence came to an end in March 2025 with the club's dissolution. Founded in 1961 in the mining town of Soligorsk, built around deposits of potash salt, the club's name itself reflected the region's mining identity - Shakhtyor means miner in both Russian and Belarusian.
Throughout the Soviet era, the team competed mainly in the lower divisions of the Byelorussian SSR league, achieving its best results in the late 1980s, finishing as runners-up twice, in 1988 and 1990. After Belarus gained independence, the club competed continuously in the top flight from 1992 onward. Shakhtyor won its first major trophy, the Belarusian Cup, in 2004, and a year later, in 2005, claimed the national championship for the first time. Fans then waited fifteen years for the next title - the club won again in both 2020 and 2021, establishing itself as one of the strongest forces in Belarusian football. In 2022, Shakhtyor claimed a fourth championship, but the title was later stripped from the club in May 2023 by league authorities following a match-fixing scandal.
The club's final years were marked by sporting and organisational crisis - in the 2024 season, Shakhtyor finished bottom of the table in 16th place and were relegated to the First League, and just months later, in March 2025, the club announced its dissolution. Known as the Miners, the team played its home matches for more than sixty years at the Stroitel Stadium in Soligorsk, remaining an important part of the identity of a city built around potash mining.
