Vorskla PoltavaFC Vorskla Poltava is a Ukrainian football club founded on 5 January 1955 at the initiative of Mikhail Stakhursky, then first secretary of the regional committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine in Poltava. The team was established under the name Kolhospnyk, representing the republican sports society Kolos, which united clubs linked to the agricultural sector. In its very first year the team won its first trophy, an industry-level USSR Cup, and it adopted its current name, referencing the Vorskla river that flows through Poltava, in the following decades.
Since its founding, the club has played its home matches at the same venue — today's stadium named after Oleksiy Butovsky, which over the years also bore the names Urozhay, Kolhospnyk and Kolos, before being renamed in 2008 in honour of the Ukrainian educator and Olympic movement figure. The club plays in green and white, though at home its players traditionally wear white kits.
The greatest success in Vorskla's history came in the 2008–09 season, when the team won the Ukrainian Cup — still its only major trophy to date. Three years later, in the 2011–12 season, the club made its mark on the European history of Ukrainian football by reaching the group stage of the UEFA Europa League, one of the few occasions the Poltava side made an impression on the wider international stage. Vorskla's best league results came in the 1996–97 and 2017–18 seasons, when it twice finished third in the table — still the club's highest-ever finish in the Ukrainian championship.
Vorskla's history is also marked by a tragic event: in July 2014, club president Oleh Babayev was shot dead, with the case classified as premeditated murder. Despite difficult moments, the club remains one of the traditional participants in Ukraine's top football division, although since the 2025–26 season it has competed in the Persha Liha, the country's second tier.
