Trabzonspor Kulübü was formally established on 2 August 1967, born out of the merger of several local sports clubs from the Black Sea city of Trabzon, most notably İdmanocağı and İdmangücü. Reaching the top flight in 1974, the club never looked back, and just two seasons later, in 1975–76, Trabzonspor became the first team from outside Istanbul to be crowned champions of Turkey, breaking a monopoly that the country's three Istanbul giants had held since the league's inception.
That title launched what remains the club's golden era: between 1976 and 1984, Trabzonspor won six Süper Lig championships, a run of dominance from the Black Sea coast that earned the team its nickname Karadeniz Fırtınası ("Black Sea Storm"). The club's European breakthrough came in the same period — in the 1976–77 European Cup, Trabzonspor defeated the reigning English champions Liverpool 1–0, one of the earliest victories by a Turkish club over top English opposition. After 1984, the title drought lasted 38 years, until Trabzonspor finally won its seventh Süper Lig crown in 2021–22, sealed with a 2–2 draw against Antalyaspor in front of a full home crowd.
Alongside its league titles, the club has won the Turkish Cup on several occasions and holds a long-standing rivalry with the traditional Istanbul clubs, whose historic dominance it was the first to challenge. Trabzonspor's men's team, nicknamed Bordo-Mavililer ("The Claret-Blues") for its colours, plays its home matches at the Şenol Güneş Sports Complex, opened in 2016 and named after the club's most celebrated former goalkeeper and manager, replacing the historic Hüseyin Avni Aker Stadium that had been Trabzonspor's home for decades. Long regarded as one of the four biggest clubs in Turkish football, Trabzonspor remains a source of regional pride and a regular contender for domestic and continental honours.