Malmö FFMalmö FF is inseparably associated with sky blue, yet the club did not actually start out in that colour. It was founded on 24 February 1910, when 19 members of the football section of BK Idrott, which had split from local rival IFK Malmö a year earlier, met at a restaurant behind the stand at Malmö IP and formed Malmö Fotbollförening. Werner Mårtensson became the club's first chairman. The new side initially kept BK Idrott's blue-and-white striped shirts, but within months switched to red and white to mark its independence. It was only in 1920, during a summer tour of Germany, that the team wore sky-blue shirts for the first time, and two years later the club's annual meeting formally adopted sky blue and white as the official colours – the origin of the nicknames "Di Blåe" and "Himmelsblått" (The Sky Blues).
Malmö FF won its first Swedish championship in the 1943/44 season, also lifting the domestic cup that same year. From that point the club built its reputation as Sweden's most decorated side – according to the club's own records it has since won 24 Swedish championships and 16 Swedish Cups, alongside a record number of Allsvenskan-era league titles. The 1970s proved especially fruitful, bringing five championships and four cups in a single decade.
The high point of the club's European history came in the 1978/79 season, when Malmö FF became the only Nordic side ever to reach the final of the European Cup. In the final at Munich's Olympiastadion, the team lost 0–1 to Nottingham Forest, though reaching the final was still honoured with the Svenska Dagbladet Gold Medal as Swedish sport's outstanding achievement of the year. That same season, Malmö FF also became the only Nordic club to compete in the Intercontinental Cup.
Until 1957 the team played its home matches at Malmö IP, then for half a century at Malmö Stadion, built for the 1958 World Cup. Since 13 April 2009, the club has played at the modern Eleda Stadion (previously known under the sponsored name Swedbank Stadion), which holds 22,500 spectators. Today, Malmö FF remains a regular participant in European competition, having reached the UEFA Champions League group stage on several occasions in recent years, making it Sweden's most internationally recognised club.
