UD AlmeríaUD Almería is the product of a city that had to wait a long time for professional football. Before 1989 the football history of the province was a string of failed clubs, from Almería Foot-Ball Club, Almería Sporting Club and Almería Athletic Club in the early decades to the later AD Almería, which played in La Liga between 1979 and 1981 and disappeared in 1982. The last attempt came in July 1989, when the businessman Guillermo Blanes launched Almería Club de Fútbol, a club with no history and one aim: to climb. In 2001 it was renamed Unión Deportiva Almería after Polideportivo Almería withdrew, and it kept its original federation number.
The climb was slow. By the 2005–06 season the club was in its fourth consecutive year in the second division, finishing sixth, and what changed its prospects was a new ground. The Estadio de los Juegos Mediterráneos opened on 31 July 2004, built at a cost of about €21 million for the 2005 Mediterranean Games hosted by the city. The stadium belongs to the municipality, and the club operates it under a long lease, which the new owners agreed to extend for another 25 years in 2021. Its commercial name has changed, to Power Horse Stadium between 2022 and 2024 and then to UD Almería Stadium, but the club's identity has always been tied to the original name and the Games it commemorates.
The breakthrough came in 2007 under the coach Unai Emery. On 19 May 2007 Almería finished as runners-up in the Segunda División and won promotion to La Liga for the first time, bringing top-flight football back to a province that had gone 26 years without it. The debut was memorable: in its first La Liga match the club won 3–0 away at Deportivo de La Coruña. In 2007–08 it finished eighth, which remains its best result in the top flight, with Álvaro Negredo as the leading scorer.
The years that followed were a story of movement between divisions. Almería was relegated in 2011 and returned in 2013 through the promotion play-offs, which included an extra-time win over Las Palmas and a victory over Girona. It was relegated again in 2015, having played six seasons in the top flight in total. A third promotion came in 2021–22, when the club went up as Segunda División champions under the coach known as Rubi, which confirmed its reputation as one of Spain's youngest clubs to have established itself in La Liga.
Off the pitch, the club's path has been shaped by owners from abroad. Turki Al-Sheikh took charge of the club and led it into the Rubi era, and in May 2025 the Saudi investment consortium SMC Group, led by Mohammed Al-Khereiji, bought it from him. The red-and-whites, known as the Rojiblancos and also as the Indálicos, play in the Segunda División at the moment, and they remain a young club whose present is still being written. For a province whose football was once a story of clubs that came and went, Almería's history since 1989 has been one of persistence, and its first appearance in the top flight in 2007 is the date on which the club is judged.