Borussia Dortmund

Also written as Dortmund.

The club

Ballspielverein Borussia 09 e.V. Dortmund were founded on 19 December 1909 by eighteen Dortmund footballers dissatisfied with the church-sponsored youth teams they had been playing in. The club is based in Dortmund, North Rhine-Westphalia, and has worn black and yellow since 1913.

The ground is the Westfalenstadion, opened in 1974 and known commercially as Signal Iduna Park, with a capacity of 81,365. Before 1974 the club played at the Stadion Rote Erde. The South Stand, the Yellow Wall, is the largest standing terrace in Europe, and the club maintains the highest average football attendance in the world. The club came close to bankruptcy in 2005, the original 11 euro value of its shares having dropped by more than 80 percent.

The head coach is Niko Kovač, appointed on 2 February 2025. He followed the caretaker Mike Tullberg, who held the side between the dismissal of Nuri Şahin on 22 January 2025 after four straight defeats to open the calendar year, and before Şahin the coach was Edin Terzić, who took the club to the 2024 Champions League final and has since agreed to become head coach of Athletic Club.

Recent seasons

Dortmund finished second in 2021/22 under Marco Rose with 69 points, 85 scored and 52 conceded, Erling Haaland getting 22 league goals; Bayern Munich won the title with 77. In 2022/23 under Edin Terzić they finished second again on 71 points, level with Bayern Munich but beaten to the title on goal difference, plus 39 against plus 54. In 2023/24 they slipped to fifth on 63 points while reaching the Champions League final. 2024/25 brought the season of upheaval: Şahin was sacked in January with the club eleventh, and Kovač lifted them to fourth on 57 points, Serhou Guirassy scoring 21 league goals and 38 in all competitions. In 2025/26 Kovač's side finished second with 73 points from 34 matches, 22 wins, 7 draws and 5 defeats, 70 scored and 34 conceded, well behind Bayern Munich's 89; Guirassy scored 17 in the league and 22 in all competitions.

Honours and landmarks

German champions eight times: 1956, 1957, 1963, 1995, 1996, 2002, 2011 and 2012. DFB-Pokal winners five times, in 1965, 1989, 2012, 2017 and 2021. Champions League winners in 1997 and runners-up in 2013 and 2024, European Cup Winners' Cup winners in 1966, and Intercontinental Cup winners in 1997, beating Cruzeiro of Brazil 2-0 to become world club champions. The 2011 and 2012 titles came under Jürgen Klopp, the second of them part of a double with the cup, and the 81 points of 2011/12 were at the time the most any club had taken in a Bundesliga season.

Notable scorelines

The heaviest defeat in the club's Bundesliga history is the 12-0 loss away to Borussia Mönchengladbach on 29 April 1978, the final matchday of that season, a result that cost the coach Otto Rehhagel his job. In Europe the club lost 5-0 after extra time to Club Brugge in the 1987/88 UEFA Cup round of sixteen, having won the home leg 3-0, and the 1993 UEFA Cup final was lost 6-1 on aggregate to Juventus. Large wins on record include 9-0 against Preußen Münster in the 1972/73 Regionalliga and 8-0 against Fortuna Köln in a 1985/86 relegation play-off. More recently the 2024/25 Champions League quarter-final was lost 4-0 away to Barcelona before a 3-1 home win that was not enough. The club's record competitive win was not established from the sources read here.

European record

Dortmund beat Liverpool 2-1 after extra time in the 1966 Cup Winners' Cup final, the goals from Sigfried Held and Reinhard Libuda. The 1993 UEFA Cup final was lost heavily to Juventus, though the prize money pool still paid Borussia 25 million Deutschmarks. Revenge came in the 1997 Champions League final at Munich's Olympiastadion, defending champions Juventus beaten 3-1: Karl-Heinz Riedle scored twice, Alessandro Del Piero pulled one back, and the substitute Lars Ricken chipped the goalkeeper from more than twenty yards just sixteen seconds after coming on. The Intercontinental Cup followed that December against Cruzeiro.

The 2002 UEFA Cup final was lost to Feyenoord. On 25 May 2013 Dortmund lost the first all-German Champions League final 2-1 to Bayern Munich at Wembley, and in 2024, back in a final after eleven years, they lost 2-0 to Real Madrid. In 2024/25 they reached the Champions League quarter-finals, going out to Barcelona, and played in the first expanded FIFA Club World Cup, reaching the quarter-finals there too. In 2025/26 they went through the Champions League league phase into the knockout-phase play-offs, finishing with four wins, four draws and four defeats across ten matches; the opponent who put them out was not established from the sources read here.

Quotes

Lars Ricken, now the club's managing director, on the deadline-day loan signing of Ethan Nwaneri, to BBC Sport: "Given Konstantelias's extended absence, it was important for us to be able to strengthen our roster at short notice. For us, signing Ethan was the best possible solution from a sporting perspective." He called Nwaneri "a very talented and technically gifted midfielder".

Niklas Süle, announcing his retirement at 30 after a knee injury in a Bundesliga defeat at Hoffenheim, said on the Spielmacher podcast, as reported by BBC Sport, that after the initial tests he "went into the shower and cried for 10 minutes", and that when the MRI ruled out a third cruciate ligament tear "it was 1,000% clear to me that it was over".

Right now (2026/27)

Niko Kovač remains head coach. The summer brought Konstantinos Karetsas for 30 million euros, Giannis Konstantelias for 26 million, Joey Veerman for 22 million, Joane Gadou for 19.5 million, Kauã Prates and Justin Lerma, while Karim Adeyemi went to Barcelona for 22 million, Julian Brandt to Ajax, Salih Özcan to Beşiktaş and Julien Duranville to Lyon. Konstantelias suffered a significant knee injury in the opening 2-0 league win over Hamburg, and on deadline day Dortmund signed Ethan Nwaneri on a season-long loan from Arsenal as cover. Niklas Süle retired at the end of last season.

The Franz Beckenbauer Supercup was lost 2-1 to Bayern Munich at Signal Iduna Park on 22 August 2026 in front of 81,365, Nathaniel Brown and Michael Olise scoring before Fábio Silva replied on 75 minutes; Daniel Schlager refereed. In the Bundesliga Dortmund have won both matches, 2-0 at home to Hamburger SV on 29 August and 3-2 away to Hoffenheim on 5 September. The DFB-Pokal first round was won 5-0 at Hamburg-Eimsbütteler BC on 1 September.

As Bundesliga runners-up Dortmund are in the Champions League league phase, drawn against Internazionale, Arsenal, Real Betis, Aston Villa, Villarreal, Bodø/Glimt, AEK Athens and Sabah; the home and away split was not fully established from the sources read here, but the opening fixture is at home to Villarreal on 8 September 2026. The current Bundesliga table position beyond those two wins was not established from the sources read here.

Sources

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