Olimpija LjubljanaFew European clubs have had to rebuild their identity as literally as NK Olimpija Ljubljana. The original club, founded in 1945 as NK Enotnost and renamed Olimpija in 1962, won the first four Slovenian championships after independence in the 1990s but collapsed under roughly €3 million of debt, ceasing to exist in 2005. Its place was taken almost immediately by a newly formed club, NK Bežigrad, created that same year by supporters and former players determined to keep top-level football alive in the capital; the new club adopted the Olimpija name in 2008 and, controversially, the 1911 founding date of a separate, unrelated Ljubljana club, NK Ilirija, a claim still displayed on its crest today.
Starting out in Slovenia's fifth division in 2005-06, the reborn Olimpija won four successive promotions to reach the top-flight PrvaLiga by 2009. Seven years later, the club won its first championship as the modern Olimpija, in 2015-16, and completed its first league-and-cup double in 2017-18, defeating rivals Maribor in the Slovenian Cup final. Further league titles followed in 2022-23 and 2024-25, taking Olimpija's tally to four Slovenian championships since its refoundation, alongside two Slovenian Cups.
The rivalry with NK Maribor, known as the Eternal Derby, remains the defining fixture of Slovenian football, shaped in part by the sporting gap that briefly opened between the clubs during Olimpija's years in the lower divisions. On the European stage, Olimpija's earlier, pre-2005 incarnation reached the final of the Yugoslav Cup in 1970, narrowly losing to Red Star Belgrade, a run that earned the club a place in the Cup Winners' Cup.
Nicknamed Zmaji ("The Dragons") after the dragon on the city's coat of arms, and playing in green and white, Olimpija have called the Stožice Stadium home since 2010, a modern arena that replaced the historic Bežigrad ground and now anchors the club's ambitions both domestically and in European qualifying rounds.
