Bodø/Glimt
Also written as Bodo Glimt, Bodo/Glimt.
The club
Fotballklubben Bodø/Glimt were founded on 19 September 1916 in Bodø, in Nordland county, above the Arctic Circle. They play at Aspmyra Stadion, which they have used since 1966 and which has an artificial pitch laid in 2006. The club's own site gives the capacity as 8,200; the club article's infobox gives 8,270. Construction of a replacement ground, referred to as the Arctic Arena and planned for 10,000, began in May 2026 with completion scheduled for 2027. The club play in yellow, an all-yellow strip since the mid-1970s, and are known as Glimt, meaning gleam, and as Superlaget, the Super Team. The name was Fotballklubben Glimt until 1948, when a Trøndelag club of the same name forced a change; the hyphen in Bodø-Glimt became a slash during the 1980s.
Supporters are organised as J-feltet, formed from the older groups 1916 and Den Gule Horde, with branches in Oslo and Trondheim. The toothbrush is a genuine club tradition rather than a marketing device: supporter leaders used one to conduct the singing, the dental company Jordan noticed and sponsored it, and the captain hands a yellow toothbrush to visiting teams before matches.
Recent seasons
Bodø/Glimt were promoted in 2017 and have been the dominant force in Norway since. They finished second in 2019 with 54 points, then won the 2020 Eliteserien with 81 points from 30 matches, 26 wins and 103 goals scored, the first Northern Norwegian club to win the Norwegian league. They retained the title in 2021 with 63 points, were second in 2022 with 60, champions again in 2023 with 70 and in 2024 with 62, and second in 2025 with 70 points from 22 wins, 4 draws and 4 defeats, scoring 85 and conceding 28.
The 2026 season is in progress. After 17 matches, with the table updated to 9 August 2026, Bodø/Glimt lead the Eliteserien with 41 points from 13 wins, 2 draws and 2 defeats, 43 goals scored and 12 conceded, one point clear of Viking, who have played a match fewer.
Honours and landmarks
Four Eliteserien titles: 2020, 2021, 2023 and 2024. Three Norwegian Cups: 1975, 1993 and 2025-26. Two First Division titles, 2013 and 2017. Nine Northern Norwegian Cups between 1930 and 1969, more than any other club, won in the era when clubs from the north were barred from national competition. The 1975 cup was the first national title won by any Northern Norwegian club, and it did not bring promotion, because the play-off rules of the time applied only to northern clubs.
In Europe they reached the Europa Conference League quarter-finals in 2022, the Europa League semi-finals in 2025, the first Norwegian club to reach the last four of a European competition, and the Champions League round of 16 in 2026.
Notable scorelines
No club record win or record defeat was confirmed from the sources read here. What is documented is the European sequence. Bodø/Glimt beat Roma 6-1 at Aspmyra in the 2021-22 Conference League group stage, Roma's heaviest European defeat since a 6-1 loss to Barcelona in 2015-16. They beat Manchester City 3-1 at home on 20 January 2026 for their first win in the Champions League proper. They beat Inter Milan 3-1 at home on 18 February 2026 and won 2-1 at the Stadio Giuseppe Meazza on 24 February in front of about 70,000, taking the tie 5-2 and becoming the first Norwegian club since Rosenborg in 1999-2000 to reach the Champions League round of 16. They beat Sporting CP 3-0 at home on 11 March 2026 and still went out, losing the tie 5-3 on aggregate. The Norwegian Cup was won on 9 May 2026 at Ullevaal, 3-3 after extra time against Brann and 4-2 on penalties.
European record
The first European tie was in 1976, a Cup Winners' Cup meeting with Napoli. Inter followed in 1978 and Sampdoria in 1994, all defeats. Beşiktaş knocked them out of the UEFA Cup in 2004. In 2020 the tie with Milan was played as a single match at San Siro because of the pandemic, and Glimt lost 3-2.
The modern record begins in 2021. Legia Warsaw eliminated them 5-2 on aggregate from Champions League qualifying, and Glimt dropped into the inaugural Europa Conference League group stage. They beat Zorya Luhansk, drew 0-0 at CSKA Sofia, then beat Roma 6-1 at home and drew 2-2 in Rome, finishing second in the group unbeaten and one point behind Roma. They beat Celtic home and away in the knockout play-offs and AZ Alkmaar in the round of 16, Alfons Sampsted scoring in extra time in Alkmaar. In the quarter-finals they beat Roma again, 2-1 at Aspmyra, before losing the return 4-0.
In 2023 Lech Poznań put them out of the Conference League knockout play-offs, 0-0 in Bodø and a Mikael Ishak goal in Poland. In 2024-25 they knocked out Olympiacos and then Lazio, drawing the tie 3-3 on aggregate after an Andreas Helmersen equaliser in extra time and winning 3-2 on penalties on 17 April 2025, before losing 5-1 on aggregate to Tottenham Hotspur in the semi-finals.
They reached the Champions League league phase for the first time in 2025-26 by beating Sturm Graz 6-2 on aggregate in the play-off. In the league phase they came from four points below the play-off places to progress, beat Manchester City and Atlético Madrid, then Inter twice in the knockout play-off, and lost to Sporting CP in the round of 16.
Quotes
- "De spiller en fotball som er utrolig utfordrende, så det resultatet med hjem er utrolig viktig. Det var deilig" - Odin Bjørtuft, Bodø/Glimt defender, to glimt.no, 5 August 2026. https://www.glimt.no/nyheter/glimt-med-et-godt-utgangspunkt-for-returen - "Det var en innholdsrik og morsom kamp mellom to gode fotballag. Vi klarte ikke helt å utnytte alt vi hadde håpet og ønsket, men vi må vel si oss OK fornøyd med 3-3 på bortebane mot et godt lag som spilte i Champions League i fjor" - Patrick Berg, Bodø/Glimt midfielder, to glimt.no, 5 August 2026. https://www.glimt.no/nyheter/glimt-med-et-godt-utgangspunkt-for-returen
No quotation from Kjetil Knutsen was confirmed from the sources read here. The club's report of the second leg, published on 11 August 2026, carries no attributed quotes.
Right now (2026/27)
Kjetil Knutsen remains head coach, in post since the start of the 2018 season, with Inge Henning Andersen as president. Summer trading has been light and one-way: Joshua Kitolano arrived from Sparta Rotterdam, while Kasper Høgh joined Celtic on 28 July 2026 and Anders Klynge joined Jagiellonia Białystok on 29 July 2026. No fees for those moves were confirmed from the sources read here.
Domestically the club are top of the Eliteserien on 41 points from 17 matches as at 9 August 2026, and hold the Norwegian Cup, won on 9 May 2026. They enter the 2026-27 Norwegian Cup away at Fauske/Sprint on 22 August.
In Europe they entered the 2026-27 Champions League at the third qualifying round, League Path, and are through to the play-off. The first leg against Union Saint-Gilloise was played on 4 August 2026 at the Batimont Solar Park in Ostend, Union's regular Joseph Marien Stadium having failed UEFA requirements, and finished 3-3. Patrick Berg scored on 20 minutes and Ole Didrik Blomberg from the penalty spot on 29; Raul Florucz scored twice for Union, on 25 minutes and in first-half stoppage time; Promise David put Union 3-2 up on 88 before Odin Bjørtuft equalised in the first minute of added time. The return at Aspmyra on 11 August finished 3-2 to Bodø/Glimt after extra time, and Bodø/Glimt won 6-5 on aggregate. The club's own report of the match credits Ole Didrik Blomberg with the opener on 50 minutes and Andreas Helmersen with the other two, the second of them in the final minute of extra time. Union's two scorers, and the attendance, were not confirmed from the sources read here.
The play-off pairs them with NEC Nijmegen, who beat Olympiacos in the other League Path tie. The first leg is at the Goffertstadion on 19 August 2026, the second at Aspmyra on 25 August. The loser drops into the Europa League league phase.
Sources
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FK_Bod%C3%B8/Glimt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_FK_Bod%C3%B8/Glimt_season https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_Eliteserien https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026%E2%80%9327_UEFA_Champions_League_qualifying https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Norwegian_football_transfers_summer_2026 https://www.glimt.no/nyheter/glimt-med-et-godt-utgangspunkt-for-returen https://www.glimt.no/nyheter/glimt-er-videre-til-champions-league-playoff https://www.uefa.com/uefachampionsleague/match/2049106 https://www.uefa.com/uefachampionsleague/match/2049116 https://www.uefa.com/uefachampionsleague/match/2049214
Researched and written for not4quarters. Where a fact could not be established from the sources read, this page says so rather than guessing.