Aberdeen

The club

Aberdeen were founded on 14 April 1903 and have played at Pittodrie Stadium in the city ever since. The ground holds 19,274. The club are known as the Dons, and also as the Dandies or simply the Reds. They play in red and white, colours adopted in 1939; before that Aberdeen wore black and gold stripes.

Recent seasons

Aberdeen have been a Premiership club throughout. They finished fourth in the curtailed 2019/20 season with 45 points from 30 games, and fourth again in 2020/21 with 56. A poor 2021/22 brought a tenth-place finish on 41 points, then third in 2022/23 with 57. In 2023/24 they were seventh on 48 points but reached the League Cup final. The best of the run was 2024/25: fifth in the league with 53 points, and the Scottish Cup won on 24 May 2025 with a penalty shootout victory over Celtic, the club's first Scottish Cup in 35 years.

The 2025/26 season went badly. Aberdeen finished ninth of twelve with 40 points from 38 games, 11 wins, 7 draws and 20 defeats, scoring 40 and conceding 55. Jimmy Thelin left on 4 January 2026 after a winless run, Peter Leven took interim charge, and Stephen Robinson was appointed on 12 March 2026, drawing his first match 1-1 with Falkirk. The Scottish Cup defence ended in the quarter-finals, beaten 3-0 by Dunfermline Athletic on 7 March 2026 after wins over Raith Rovers and Motherwell. Aberdeen also reached the League Cup quarter-finals, losing 1-0 to Motherwell on 20 September 2025. Kevin Nisbet was top scorer with 11 goals in all competitions.

The cup win took Aberdeen into Europa League qualifying, where they drew 2-2 with FCSB at Pittodrie and lost the return 3-0, dropping into the Conference League league phase. There they finished 35th of 36, a run that included a 6-0 defeat at AEK Athens.

Honours and landmarks

Aberdeen have won the Scottish league title four times, in 1954/55, 1979/80, 1983/84 and 1984/85. They have won the Scottish Cup eight times, most recently in 2024/25, and the League Cup six times. In 1983 they won the European Cup Winners' Cup and the European Super Cup, still the only Scottish club other than Rangers and Celtic to hold a European trophy. Record attendance at Pittodrie is 45,061 against Heart of Midlothian in a Scottish Cup tie on 13 March 1954, from a ground that was then far larger than the all-seated bowl of today.

Notable scorelines

Record victory: 13-0 against Peterhead in the Scottish Cup in 1923. Record defeat: 0-9 against Celtic on 6 November 2010. The result the club still measures itself by is the European Cup Winners' Cup final of 1983, though the details of that match were not confirmed from the sources read here. More recently, the 2025 Scottish Cup final against Celtic finished level and Aberdeen won the shootout on 24 May 2025.

Head-to-head notes

Aberdeen do not publish all-time head-to-head records on their own site, and no reliable published all-time record was established for any of the eleven other 2026/27 Premiership clubs. What can be stated is recent and specific. In 2025/26 Aberdeen finished ninth, below Celtic, Hearts, Rangers, Motherwell, Hibernian, Falkirk, Dundee United and Dundee, and above Kilmarnock only on goal difference, with St Mirren and Livingston beneath them. Motherwell knocked Aberdeen out of the League Cup at the quarter-final stage on 20 September 2025. Dunfermline, who are a Championship club in 2026/27 and so not a league opponent, ended the Scottish Cup defence 3-0. Stephen Robinson's first match in charge was a 1-1 draw with Falkirk, who are also in the Premiership this season. Aberdeen have signed two players from Kilmarnock and one from Livingston this summer, and sold Graeme Shinnie to Inverness Caledonian Thistle. Records against Queen's Park, Queen of the South, Kelty Hearts and Brora Rangers, the League Cup group opponents, are likewise not established.

Right now (2026/27)

Stephen Robinson is the manager, appointed on 12 March 2026, and this is his first full season. The rebuild has been extensive. Lewis Mayo and Brad Lyons both arrived free from Kilmarnock on 28 May, as did Alexander Briedl from Blau-Weiss Linz. Defender Dan Happe joined free from Leyton Orient on 5 June. Toyosi Olusanya returned permanently from Houston Dynamo on 16 June having spent the previous season on loan at Pittodrie, and Connor Ronan came free from Colorado Rapids on 17 June. Tony Yogane signed from Brentford for an undisclosed fee on 19 June and Ayoub Mouloua from FUS Rabat, also undisclosed, on 28 June. Nesta Guinness-Walker joined free from Northampton Town on 8 July, Lewis Smith from Livingston for £300,000 on 13 July, and goalkeeper Marius Muller free from Wolfsburg on 16 July. Chief executive Alan Burrows said in July that a twelfth signing was close and that departures would follow, the squad being larger than the club wanted.

Going the other way, Ryan Duncan, Vicente Besuijen, Tom McIntyre and Elvis Bwomono were released on 25 May, and long-serving captain Graeme Shinnie left for Inverness Caledonian Thistle on 26 May. Per Kristian Bratveit left as a free agent on 12 June, Alexander Jensen joined Elfsborg for an undisclosed fee on 6 July, Topi Keskinen went to Odense on 10 July for a fee reported at around £1m, and Marko Lazetic joined FC Noah on 13 July. Alfie Bavidge and Alfie Stewart went on loan to Inverness on 26 June and 7 July, and Bradley Chikomo and Aaron Cummings to Elgin City on 8 July.

The start has been strong. Aberdeen won all four Premier Sports Cup Group A matches and took the group with 12 points and a goal difference of eleven scored, two conceded. They won 2-0 at Brora Rangers on 14 July with two Nisbet goals, beat Queen's Park 2-0 up inside eleven minutes and 2-1 at the finish on 18 July through Happe and Smith, won 4-1 at Queen of the South on 22 July with a Nisbet hat-trick and a Lyons goal, and closed with a 3-0 home win over Kelty Hearts on 25 July, Nisbet again from the spot inside two minutes, then Kjartansson and Olusanya. Pre-season ended with a 2-0 win at Linfield in Belfast. The reward is a home last-16 tie with Dundee at Pittodrie on 15 August 2026. The Premiership campaign opens at home to Heart of Midlothian on Saturday 1 August 2026 at 5.30pm, live on Sky Sports.

Sources

Researched and written for not4quarters. Where a fact could not be established from the sources read, this page says so rather than guessing.