FK Liepāja
Also written as FK Liepaja.
The club
FK Liepāja were founded in March 2014 in the Latvian port city of Liepāja, as the direct successor to FK Liepājas Metalurgs, which was dissolved after the 2013 season when its sole sponsor, the metallurgical plant A/S Liepājas Metalurgs, went bankrupt. FK Liepāja is not that club. Liepājas Metalurgs traced its own lineage back to 1945, through Daugava Liepāja and Dinamo Liepāja, which merged in 1949 to form Sarkanais Metalurgs and were renamed several times over the decades - Zvejnieks Liepāja from 1962, Olimpija Liepāja from 1990, briefly FK Liepāja itself in 1994, then DAG Liepāja and Baltika Liepāja before settling on the Metalurgs name in 1997. That club played in the Virslīga from 1997 until its 2013 collapse and won the Latvian title in 2005, the first club other than Skonto Riga to do so since the league restarted in 1991. The new FK Liepāja, formed in 2014, incorporated the old club's players, youth teams and top-flight league slot but is a separate legal entity, not a continuation or a rebrand. Because an earlier version of the Metalurgs lineage briefly used the exact name "FK Liepāja" in 1994, the two are easy to conflate, but the club that plays today dates only from 2014. No other currently active Liepāja-named senior club was found in the sources read here.
The club plays at the Daugava Stadium in Liepāja, given as seating 5,100 by English-language sources and 5,000 by the Latvian-language club entry; the discrepancy was not resolved from the sources read here. The home kit is a striped design, the away kit is described as black and white, and a third kit in dark green also appears in the sources, though the exact shade names and any earlier ground the club played at before 2014 were not established from the sources read here. From 2017 to 2019 the club competed under the sponsored name FK Liepāja/Mogo. The club president is Oļegs Hramovs. As of late August 2026 the club is between head coaches: Vladimirs Vasiļjevs left the post on 27 August 2026, a day after a home defeat, having been appointed on 1 June 2026 following the departure of the Swedish coach Andreas Alm, who had been in the job since 8 May 2025.
Recent seasons
FK Liepāja finished fourth in their first season, 2014, with the midfielder Jānis Ikaunieks voted the league's best player after scoring 23 league goals. They won the Virslīga title in 2015 with 52 points from 24 matches, 15 wins, 7 draws and 2 losses. Since then the club has settled into the upper-middle of the table without threatening the title again: fourth in 2016 with 42 points, second in 2017 with 37, fourth in 2018 with 51, sixth in 2019 with 39, fifth in 2020 with 42, third in 2021 with 51, fourth in 2022 with 70, fifth in 2023 with 51, and sixth in 2024 with 39. They finished third in the 2025 Virslīga, which was enough to enter the 2026/27 UEFA Conference League as Latvia's third-placed entrant. Through 27 rounds of the 2026 season, as of 25 August 2026, Liepāja sit fifth in the ten-team Virslīga on 37 points from 27 matches, 11 wins, 4 draws and 12 losses, with 36 goals scored and 39 conceded, well adrift of leaders RFS on 66 points and Riga FC on 65.
Honours and landmarks
FK Liepāja have won the Virslīga once, in 2015, and the Latvian Football Cup twice, in 2017 and 2020. The predecessor club, FK Liepājas Metalurgs, is a separate honours record and is not counted here: its 2005 Virslīga title belongs to that earlier, now-defunct club. The clearest landmark for the 2014-founded club remains that 2015 championship, delivered in only the club's second season of existence under the Latvian coach Viktors Dobrecovs, who managed the side from March 2014 to November 2016.
Notable scorelines
FK Liepāja's heaviest defeat in the sources read here is 0-3 at home to Red Bull Salzburg in the second qualifying round of the 2016/17 Champions League, part of a 0-3 aggregate loss (0-2 away, 0-1 at home, split across the two legs as recorded). Their heaviest single European defeat by margin came in the 2026/27 Conference League second qualifying round, losing 1-3 away to Austria Wien after a 0-2 home defeat, out 1-5 on aggregate. Among their better results, they beat Struga of North Macedonia 4-1 away in 2021 as part of a 5-2 aggregate win, and beat Dečić of Montenegro 3-1 on aggregate in the first qualifying round of the 2026/27 Conference League, winning 2-1 away after a 1-0 home first leg. The club's all-time record win and record defeat in domestic competition were not established from the sources read here.
European record
FK Liepāja have entered UEFA competition regularly since qualifying via the 2015 title. In the 2016/17 Champions League they lost to Red Bull Salzburg in the second qualifying round, 0-2 at home and 0-1 away. In the 2017/18 Europa League they drew 2-0 at home and lost 1-3 away to Crusaders of Northern Ireland, going out on away goals at 3-3 on aggregate, having gone through the first qualifying round; they then lost to Sūduva Marijampolė of Lithuania in the following round, 0-2 at home and 1-0 away, 1-2 on aggregate. In 2018/19 they lost to BK Häcken of Sweden in the first qualifying round, 0-3 at home and 2-1 away, 2-4 on aggregate. In 2019/20 they beat Dinamo Minsk of Belarus in the first qualifying round, 1-1 at home and 2-1 away for a 3-2 aggregate win, before losing to IFK Norrköping of Sweden in the second round, 0-1 at home and 0-2 away.
In the newly-formed Europa Conference League, FK Liepāja beat Struga of North Macedonia 5-2 on aggregate in the first qualifying round of 2021/22, 1-1 at home and 4-1 away, before losing to CSKA Sofia of Bulgaria on penalties after two goalless draws, 1-3 on spot kicks. In 2022/23 they beat Gjilani of Kosovo 3-2 on aggregate in the first qualifying round, 3-1 at home and 0-1 away, then lost to Young Boys of Switzerland in the second round, 0-1 at home and 0-3 away. In 2024/25 they lost to Víkingur of the Faroe Islands in the first qualifying round, drawing 1-1 at home before losing 0-2 away, out 1-3 on aggregate.
Head-to-head notes
Specific head-to-head records against individual opponents beyond the European ties listed above were not established from the sources read here.
Right now (2026/27)
FK Liepāja entered the 2026/27 UEFA Conference League as Latvia's third-placed club from 2025 and were eliminated in the second qualifying round. They beat Dečić of Montenegro in the first qualifying round, winning 1-0 at home before completing the tie with a 2-1 away win in Montenegro, 3-1 on aggregate. In the second qualifying round they were beaten by Austria Wien of Austria, losing 0-2 at home and then 1-3 away in Vienna, out 1-5 on aggregate, and are now out of Europe for the season.
Domestically, Liepāja are fifth in the ten-team 2026 Virslīga as of 25 August 2026, on 37 points from 27 matches (11 wins, 4 draws, 12 losses, 36 goals for, 39 against), well off the pace set by RFS (66 points) and Riga FC (65) and just behind fourth-placed Daugavpils on 37 points but with an inferior goal difference. The club has been unsettled off the pitch: the Swedish coach Andreas Alm was let go on 29 May 2026 and replaced on 1 June 2026 by Vladimirs Vasiļjevs, who himself left the post on 27 August 2026 after a run of matches without a win, described in the club's own reporting as "again without points." Liepāja's own preview material around that period spoke of needing points on the road, and the club was in the market for a new head coach heading into a home fixture against Riga FC on 30 August 2026 and an away trip to RFS on 7 September 2026. Specific transfer business for the 2026 season and the identity of any new permanent head coach were not established from the sources read here.
Sources
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FK_Liep%C4%81ja https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FK_Liep%C4%81jas_Metalurgs https://lv.wikipedia.org/wiki/FK_Liep%C4%81ja https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_Latvian_Higher_League https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026%E2%80%9327_UEFA_Conference_League https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026%E2%80%9327_UEFA_Conference_League_qualifying_phase_and_play-off_round https://fkliepaja.lv/en/ https://fkliepaja.lv/en/news/
Researched and written for not4quarters. Where a fact could not be established from the sources read, this page says so rather than guessing.