page_title: List of unrelegated association football clubs
section_title: Historical considerations
hierarchical_section_title: List of unrelegated association football clubs / Historical considerations
caption_attribution_description: English: Chart showing the timeline of football leagues created after the dissolution of SFR Yugoslavia and its Yugoslav First League.
context_page_description: Several association football clubs succeed in playing at the highest level without being relegated from their domestic league. This page lists the clubs that managed to stay in top flight for an extended period of time, and those that have never been relegated from their current top-tier league.
context_section_description: More often than not, football clubs have played in more than one top-tier competition. It is therefore possible that teams relegated at one point in their history, but have not done so in the competition in which they currently compete. This is the case for multiple teams in countries where football was played in regional leagues prior to the creation of a unified national league. In such countries, a national champion was previously declared by means of a play-off tournament between teams that qualified through their regional tournaments. In Germany, for instance, seven teams have never been relegated from the Bundesliga (some joining more recently), but three of them found themselves expelled from the older Oberligen. Hamburg played continuously in the top tier of the German football system from the end of World War I until 2018. In the Netherlands, football used to be organised in regional competitions as well. The unified Eredivisie was born in 1956, and four teams have continuously played at this highest national level since then.
  Even before the establishment of regional competitions, football was played in league systems. The very first football championships in Europe were often organised on a local level. Taking these smaller competitions into account, Austria Wien and Rapid Wien can claim to have played at the highest possible level since competition began in Austria in 1911. At that time however, the only organised football was played in the league of Lower Austria, which was then located in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and only teams from Vienna took part. Later, Austrian teams competed in the German football system for several years, which made it possible for Rapid Wien to become German champion in 1941. The current Austrian Bundesliga was only established in 1974, and to this point a total of five teams never relegated from that competition.
  In Greece and Turkey, competitive football was organised in even smaller leagues. In both countries, city-leagues were the highest level for quite some time. In 1959, a unified Hellenic championship was founded, and Olympiacos, Panathinaikos and PAOK have played in every season of it. However, these teams were already high-flyers in the preceding city-leagues. The same applies to Beşiktaş, Fenerbahçe and Galatasaray in Turkey.
  In Russia, football too was first played at city-level. The St. Petersburg Football League was established in 1901, and its Moscovite counterpart followed in 1909. Many years later, in 1936, the Soviet Top League was formed. This competition ceased to exist when the Soviet Union fell, and new leagues were formed in the fifteen successor states. As a result, many teams entered a top division for the first time in their history. In Estonia, for example, the new Meistriliiga was composed of clubs that never participated in the top flight before. As these are relatively new competitions, many clubs can claim to have never been relegated from the top-level. But only Dynamo Kyiv and Dinamo Tbilisi have always played at the highest possible level. On the other hand, Dynamo Moscow played in every season of the Soviet Top League but was relegated from the Russian Premier League in the 2015–16 season.
  Besides the Soviet, also the Czechoslovak and Yugoslav football leagues split into multiple competitions in the early 1990s. A total of eight teams have not been relegated from the national championships of the Czech Republic and Slovakia, but no team managed to achieve this in Czechoslovak times. In Bosnia and Herzegovina, football became divided alongside ethnic lines and competition was held in three different leagues, before the establishment of a national division in 2000. In Kosovo, a national league also exists, although not it was not recognised by UEFA or FIFA until 2016. In all, three clubs – Red Star Belgrade, Partizan Belgrade and Dinamo Zagreb – have played at the highest level since the creation of socialist Yugoslavia, whilst Hajduk Split have never been relegated since they first played in the championship of the now long gone Kingdom of Serbs
caption: Timeline chart showing Yugoslav First League successors
exif: {}