Girona FC Girona FC, founded on 23 July 1930 in Girona, filled the void left by Unió Deportiva Gerona, the city's earlier club that had disappeared due to financial troubles. The new team was founded at Café Norat on the famous Rambla, with Albert de Quintana de León serving as its first president. The club's path to the Spanish elite proved exceptionally long and uneven: despite a promising start in the 1930s, when the team narrowly missed promotion to the second division, the following decades brought repeated relegations, including to the third and even fourth tier in the early 1980s.
The breakthrough finally came in 2017, when, after 87 years in existence, the club earned promotion to La Liga for the first time in its history, finishing the season as runners-up to Levante. That same year, City Football Group, the owner of Manchester City among other clubs, acquired a 44.3% stake in Girona, paving the way for modernised scouting and coaching structures. The following years brought alternating relegations and promotions back to the top flight, but none compared to what happened in the 2023–24 season.
That season is written in gold letters in Girona's history. A symbolic moment came with a 4–2 win over FC Barcelona in December 2023, which took the team to the top of the table, and Artem Dovbyk later finished as La Liga's top scorer with 24 goals, winning the Pichichi Trophy. The club ultimately finished third with 81 points, just four behind second-placed Barcelona, securing a historic first-ever qualification for the UEFA Champions League in the club's nearly century-long history. That spectacular rise, one of the most surprising stories in European football in recent years, proved difficult to sustain — just two years later, in the 2025–26 season, the club was relegated back to Spain's second division.
Girona, playing in their distinctive white-and-red colours drawn from the city's coat of arms, play their home matches at the Estadi Montilivi, their home continuously since 1970, when it replaced the earlier Vista Alegre stadium used for almost five decades.
