FC Dinamo Tbilisi
Also written as Dinamo Tbilisi.
The club
FC Dinamo Tbilisi were founded on 1 September 1925 in the Georgian capital, emerging from the All-Union Dynamo sports society that also gave its name to Dinamo Moscow and other clubs across the Soviet Union. Dinamo Tbilisi is the most successful football club in Georgian history and is not to be confused with any of the other clubs carrying the Dinamo name that this corpus also covers. It is not Dinamo Riga, the Latvian club now known as Riga FC, formed in 2014 from the merger of FC Caramba and the original Dinamo Riga, and still sometimes listed by feeds under the old combined name. It is not Dinamo City of Tirana, the Albanian club that played for most of its history as Dinamo Tirana before a 2023 rebrand tied to a Manchester City-linked project. It is also not Dinamo Minsk of Belarus or Dinamo Zagreb of Croatia, both separate clubs of the same Soviet-era sporting society that this corpus covers elsewhere. And within Georgia itself, Dinamo Tbilisi is not Dinamo Batumi, the Adjaran club that has been the country's strongest side in several recent seasons, nor is it Dila Gori, the Gori club that itself played as Dinamo Gori until 1961 before taking a separate name. Dinamo Tbilisi is the Tbilisi club, and only the Tbilisi club, of all of these.
The home ground is the Boris Paichadze Dinamo Arena in Tbilisi, current capacity 54,202 after renovations completed between 2006 and 2012; the ground was originally built in 1935 with a capacity of 23,000 and was expanded to around 78,000 during the 1970s before later reductions. It hosted the 2015 UEFA Super Cup between Barcelona and Sevilla. The club plays in blue and white. The head coach is Temur Ketsbaia, who took over on 22 April 2026 after Vladimer Kakashvili left by mutual consent with the team then in eighth place; the club's owner and president is Roman Pipia, in charge since 2011.
Recent seasons
In the 2026 Erovnuli Liga, run as a calendar-year season, Dinamo Tbilisi sat third after 21 matches with 9 wins, 7 draws and 5 defeats for 34 points, a goal difference of plus eight. In the 2025 season they finished fourth of ten. Full standings and points for other recent seasons were not established from the sources read here.
Honours and landmarks
Soviet Top League champions in 1964 and 1978, and Soviet Cup winners in 1976 and 1979. Since Georgian independence the club has won the Erovnuli Liga, or its earlier equivalents, 19 times between 1990 and 2022, the Georgian Cup 13 times between 1991 and 2016, and the Georgian Super Cup nine times. The club's defining landmark is winning the 1980–81 European Cup Winners' Cup, still the only European trophy won by a Georgian club.
Notable scorelines
In their first European match, the 1972–73 UEFA Cup, Dinamo Tbilisi beat FC Twente 3-2 with goals from Givi Nodia, who scored twice, and David Kipiani. In the 1979–80 European Cup they beat Liverpool 3-0 at home after losing 1-2 at Anfield, eliminating the English side, before losing to Hamburg in the next round. Their heaviest documented European defeat is 0-8 on aggregate to Tottenham Hotspur in the 2013–14 Europa League, beaten 5-0 away and 3-0 at home. The club's largest documented victory of any kind is a 9-5 win over Dynamo Moscow in a 1930s friendly. The all-time competitive domestic record win and defeat were not established from the sources read here.
European record
Dinamo Tbilisi's European history runs back to the Soviet era. In the 1980–81 European Cup Winners' Cup they beat West Ham United 4-1 on aggregate, home 4-1 away 0-1, then Feyenoord Rotterdam 3-2 on aggregate, before beating Carl Zeiss Jena 2-1 in the final on 13 May 1981 with goals from Vitaly Daraselia and Vladimir Gutsaev. The following season, 1981–82, they reached the semi-finals as holders before losing to Standard Liège.
After Georgian independence, the 1993–94 European Cup brought a 2-1 home win over Linfield, Shota Arveladze and Gela Inalishvili scoring, and a 1-1 draw away, before the club faced disqualification over bribery allegations. In the 1996–97 UEFA Cup they went three rounds, eliminating CS Grevenmacher, Molde and Torpedo Moscow before losing to Boavista. In the 1998–99 Champions League qualifying they went out to Athletic Bilbao on away goals, 2-1 then 0-1. In the 2004–05 UEFA Cup they came through qualifying into a group stage alongside Newcastle United, Sporting Clube de Portugal, Sochaux and Panionios, losing all four matches. In 2013–14 they were eliminated by Tottenham Hotspur in the Europa League, 8-0 on aggregate.
Quotes
No directly quoted material was confirmed from the sources read here.
Right now (2026/27)
Temur Ketsbaia is the head coach, in place since April 2026. No 2026–27 UEFA European qualifying campaign for Dinamo Tbilisi was established from the sources read here; the club sat third in the 2026 Erovnuli Liga after 21 rounds, on 34 points from 9 wins, 7 draws and 5 defeats, a position that has not recently been enough for direct European qualification from Georgia. Whether the club has European football this season, and any 2026–27 domestic cup or transfer activity, were not confirmed from the sources read here.
Sources
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FC_Dinamo_Tbilisi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_Erovnuli_Liga https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FC_Dila_Gori
Researched and written for not4quarters. Where a fact could not be established from the sources read, this page says so rather than guessing.