Kryvbas Kryvyi RigFC Kryvbas Kryvyi Rih is a Ukrainian football club from the city of Kryvyi Rih in Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, tracing its roots to 1959, when a professional football team was established at the Dzerzhinsky mine, the oldest in the city. The club, playing in red and white, changed its name several times in its early years (including Avanhard and Hirnyk) before adopting the name Kryvbas in 1966, a reference to the Kryvyi Rih Iron Ore Basin that has underpinned the region's economy for decades.
The club's greatest achievements came during Ukraine's independence era: Kryvbas won the bronze medal of the national championship three times, in the 1999, 2000 and 2024 seasons, still the club's highest league finish. For decades the team was a regular fixture in Ukraine's top flight, but in June 2013, amid financial difficulties, it declared self-liquidation and was expelled from the Premier League.
The brand was revived in 2020, when the name and heritage of Kryvbas were adopted by the locally based club Hirnyk Kryvyi Rih, with its president Kostiantyn Karamanits taking charge of the reconstituted team. Although formally a continuation of a different organisation, among supporters and in the wider public narrative the new Kryvbas is treated as the natural successor to the original 1959 club. The rebuilt team quickly returned to Ukraine's top division, and in the 2024 season claimed a historic bronze medal, matching the club's best-ever league result and reaffirming the city's enduring attachment to its footballing identity.
