CSKA 1948 Sofia
The club
FC CSKA 1948 Sofia were founded on 19 July 2016 at a constitutive assembly at the Central Military Club in Sofia. The club is nicknamed the Reds (Червените) and, more distinctively, Delta Force (Делта Форс), and plays in red and white.
The circumstances of the founding are genuinely contested and worth setting out plainly rather than smoothing over, because CSKA 1948 Sofia is a separate, separately-registered club from PFC CSKA Sofia, the older organisation that traces its own foundation to 5 May 1948 out of the merger that created CDNV. In 2015 CSKA Sofia's operating company ran into severe debt, and the Bulgarian Football Union refused it a First League licence for the 2016/17 season, sending the club down to the third tier administratively; the original company, PFC CSKA AD, ceased operations on 9 September 2016. To keep the CSKA name in the top flight, the club's leadership had the corporate entity behind Litex Lovech, PFC Litex-Lovech AD, renamed PFC CSKA-Sofia EAD on 6 June 2016, and used Litex's professional licence to enter the reformed First League; that company went on to buy the CSKA Sofia brand outright in October 2018 for a reported four million euros and is recognised as the legal successor of the original club. It is that entity which plays today as CSKA Sofia. Separately, on 27 May 2016, the company behind the lower-league club Chavdar Etropole was renamed PFC CSKA-1948 AD; whether that entity is the direct corporate forerunner of today's FC CSKA 1948 Sofia was not established plainly from the sources read here, though the name and the date, seven weeks before the new club's founding assembly, suggest a connection the sources do not spell out. What the sources do say clearly is that FC CSKA 1948 Sofia was set up by supporters uneasy with the licence-transfer route used to keep CSKA's identity alive inside the reformed CSKA Sofia, and that it took the founding year of the original club, 1948, as its own name, asserting a claim to CSKA's history rather than inheriting any licence, and started out in regional amateur football rather than the professional pyramid. Both clubs describe themselves, in their own Wikipedia articles, as not to be confused with the other. Beyond that, the precise legal and sporting basis of the dispute between the two over which one, if either, is the "real" CSKA was not established cleanly from the sources read here, and this dossier does not assert a settled answer.
The club plays at Stadion Bistritsa, given a capacity of around 4,000 in the source read here. The head coach is Aleksandar Aleksandrov, appointed on 12 February 2026; the captain going into the current season is the Bolivian defender Diego Medina.
Recent seasons
CSKA 1948's rise through the Bulgarian pyramid has been rapid. They won their regional amateur group (A OFG Sofia South, the fourth tier) in 2016/17, then the Third League South-West in 2017/18 to reach the second tier. A fourth-place finish in the Second League in 2018/19 meant no promotion, but they won the Second League outright in 2019/20 to reach the First League for the first time.
Their debut top-flight campaign opened with a 2-2 draw away to CSKA Sofia on 7 August 2020. They finished third in the First League in 2022/23, reaching the Bulgarian Cup final and the Bulgarian Supercup final, losing both. In 2023/24 they were eighth after the regular season with 43 points from 30 matches, 11 wins, 10 draws and 9 defeats, but then won the four-team group that decided the remaining European place, finishing top with 52 points and beating CSKA Sofia 2-0 in a play-off for the fourth Bulgarian Conference League qualifying spot. In 2024/25 they finished tenth in the First League with 34 points from 8 wins, 10 draws and 12 defeats, 38 goals scored and 44 conceded. In 2025/26 they finished second, a large jump, on 67 points from 36 matches, 20 wins, 7 draws and 9 defeats, 54 goals scored and 35 conceded, level on points with third-placed Ludogorets Razgrad but ahead on the head-to-head or supplementary criteria used to separate them, and four points below the champions Levski Sofia. That second-place finish put them into the Conference League second qualifying round for 2026/27.
Honours and landmarks
CSKA 1948 Sofia's honours read as a record of the climb rather than of silverware won at the top: Second League champions in 2019/20, Third League champions in 2017/18, First League runners-up in 2025/26 and third place in 2022/23, Bulgarian Cup runners-up in 2022/23 and Bulgarian Supercup runners-up the same year. They have not yet won a major domestic trophy at senior level.
Notable scorelines
The result the club's own supporters point to is the 2-0 win away to CSKA Sofia on 31 May 2024 at the Vasil Levski National Stadium, in front of 5,800, that settled the fourth and final Bulgarian place in the 2024/25 UEFA Europa Conference League qualifying rounds. Nedeljko Piščević scored in the 30th minute and Pedrinho in the 53rd. Given the shared name and the still-unsettled question of identity between the two clubs, this is as close as Bulgarian football gets to a derby with an argument attached, and CSKA 1948 won it. Their first-ever top-flight meeting, on 7 August 2020, had finished 2-2. Beyond those two fixtures, no other headline scorelines against CSKA Sofia, or record wins and defeats elsewhere, were established from the sources read here.
European record
CSKA 1948 Sofia's European history is short, three campaigns deep before the current one, and always in the Conference League. They entered for the first time in 2023/24, at the second qualifying round, and lost to the Romanian side FCSB, going down 0-1 at home and 2-3 away for a 2-4 aggregate defeat. In 2024/25, the campaign they qualified for by beating CSKA Sofia in the play-off described above, they beat the Montenegrin champions Budućnost Podgorica 2-1 on aggregate, winning 1-0 at home and drawing 1-1 away after extra time, before losing to the Cypriot side Pafos in the third qualifying round, 2-1 at home and 0-4 away after extra time, out 2-5 on aggregate; Pafos went on to reach the Conference League last 16 that season. Across those campaigns and the current one the club's overall European record stands at ten matches, two wins, four draws and four defeats, eight goals scored and thirteen conceded.
Head-to-head notes
Against CSKA Sofia, the two competitive meetings read from the sources here are the 2-2 draw of 7 August 2020 and the 2-0 win for CSKA 1948 on 31 May 2024 in the European play-off; a fuller head-to-head across ordinary league fixtures between the two clubs was not established from the sources read here. Against Pafos, CSKA 1948 lost their only meeting, in the 2024/25 Conference League third qualifying round, 2-5 on aggregate. Against Panathinaikos, their only meeting is the 2026/27 third qualifying round tie described below, lost 2-3 on aggregate. No other club has been met more than once in the sources read here.
Right now (2026/27)
Aleksandar Aleksandrov remains head coach. CSKA 1948 Sofia entered the 2026/27 UEFA Europa Conference League at the second qualifying round as Bulgaria's second-placed team from 2025/26, and beat the Slovak side Spartak Trnava on penalties after two goalless draws, 0-0 after extra time at home and 0-0 away, winning the shoot-out 5-3; exact dates and penalty scorers were not established from the sources read here. In the third qualifying round they were drawn against Panathinaikos of Greece, drawing 1-1 at home on 5 August 2026 and losing 2-1 after extra time away on 11 August, out 2-3 on aggregate, ending their European campaign for the season.
Domestically, CSKA 1948 Sofia sit fourth in the First League as of the most recent table read here, on 13 points from six matches, 4 wins, 1 draw and 1 defeat, 13 goals scored and 7 conceded, a run of four straight wins before a draw and then a defeat. CSKA Sofia are immediately above them in third, also on 13 points from five matches but with a better goal difference. The two clubs sitting so close together again this early in the season, after the 2024 European play-off went CSKA 1948's way, keeps the identity question live without settling it. Summer transfer business for CSKA 1948 Sofia was not established from the sources read here.
Sources
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FC_CSKA_1948_Sofia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PFC_CSKA_Sofia https://bg.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9F%D0%A4%D0%9A_%D0%A6%D0%A1%D0%9A%D0%90_1948_(%D0%A1%D0%BE%D1%84%D0%B8%D1%8F) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023%E2%80%9324_First_Professional_Football_League_(Bulgaria) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024%E2%80%9325_First_Professional_Football_League_(Bulgaria) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025%E2%80%9326_First_Professional_Football_League_(Bulgaria) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026%E2%80%9327_First_Professional_Football_League_(Bulgaria)
Internal corpus cross-references also consulted: V:\weave\apps\not4quarters\services\api\data\dossiers\cska-sofia.md, V:\weave\apps\not4quarters\services\api\data\dossiers\panathinaikos.md, V:\weave\apps\not4quarters\services\api\data\dossiers\pafos.md, V:\weave\apps\not4quarters\services\api\data\dossiers\levski-sofia.md
Researched and written for not4quarters. Where a fact could not be established from the sources read, this page says so rather than guessing.