IFK Göteborg
Also written as Goteborg, IFK Goteborg.
The club
Idrottsföreningen Kamraterna Göteborg, IFK Göteborg, was founded on 4 October 1904 at Café Olivedal in the Annedal district of Gothenburg. The club is member-owned. It plays at Gamla Ullevi, capacity 18,454. The nicknames are Blåvitt, the Blue-White, Änglarna, the Angels, and Kamraterna, the Comrades. The team first wore blue and white striped shirts in 1910. IFK are one of the Big Three of Swedish football with Malmö FF and AIK, although they have won the league only once in the last twenty years. The chairman is Magnus Nilsson and the head of football is Jesper Jansson.
Recent seasons
IFK finished fourth in the 2025 Allsvenskan with 51 points from 30 matches, 16 wins, 3 draws and 11 defeats, 41 goals scored and 33 conceded, in a season won by Mjällby AIF. That fourth place is what put them into the 2026-27 Conference League qualifiers. Earlier in the decade the club had a bad run: 13th in 2023, their worst ever Allsvenskan finish, and eleventh in both 2017 and 2018.
The 2026 season, which runs across the calendar year and is still in progress, has gone badly in the league. As of 10 August 2026 IFK are tenth of sixteen with 19 points from 16 matches, five wins, four draws and seven defeats, 22 goals scored and 35 conceded. The largest defeat was 6-0 away to Djurgårdens IF on 4 May 2026. Stefan Billborn, in his third season, left on 27 July 2026 and Joachim Björklund took over as head coach. IFK reached the quarter-finals of the 2025-26 Svenska Cupen. Tobias Heintz is the leading scorer with seven in all competitions. August Erlingmark was made captain in January 2026 after Gustav Svensson retired.
Honours and landmarks
Eighteen Swedish championships: 1908, 1910, 1918, 1934-35, 1941-42, 1957-58, 1969, 1982, 1983, 1984, 1987, 1990, 1991, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996 and 2007. Thirteen Allsvenskan titles and thirteen runners-up finishes. Eight Svenska Cupen wins, the most recent in 2019-20. One Svenska Supercupen, in 2008. Eight Intertoto Cup group or outright wins. And, uniquely among Nordic clubs, two UEFA Cups.
The single greatest season was 1982: Allsvenskan, the Allsvenskan play-off, Svenska Cupen and the UEFA Cup, a quadruple, achieved in a year when the entire board was replaced and the club nearly went bankrupt, needing to borrow from the supporters' association to travel to Valencia for a UEFA Cup quarter-final. Sven-Göran Eriksson had been appointed manager in 1979 and introduced the 4-4-2 pressing system that became known as the Swenglish model.
Notable scorelines
Record home win in Allsvenskan: 9-1 against IK Sleipner on 10 May 1925. Record away win: 9-2 at IFK Eskilstuna on 8 October 1933. Record home defeat: 2-9 against Malmö FF on 10 September 1949. Record away defeat: 0-7 at IFK Norrköping on 1 May 1960. Record attendance for an IFK match at Nya Ullevi: 52,194 against Örgryte IS on 3 June 1959, still the Allsvenskan record. Filip Johansson scored 333 goals for the club between 1924 and 1934, including 39 in the 1924-25 league season.
The European nights that define the club are the 4-0 aggregate win over Hamburger SV in the 1982 UEFA Cup final, and the 1987 UEFA Cup final win over Dundee United.
European record
IFK Göteborg won the UEFA Cup in 1981-82 and again in 1986-87. They reached the European Cup semi-finals twice, in 1985-86, when they lost to Barcelona on penalties, and in 1992-93; and the quarter-finals three times, in 1984-85, 1988-89 and 1994-95. In the 1994-95 Champions League they were drawn with Barcelona, Manchester United and Galatasaray, were widely expected to go out, won the group, and were then eliminated by Bayern Munich on away goals in the quarter-finals. They also reached the Cup Winners' Cup quarter-finals in 1979-80.
Since then the record is slight. Their last European appearance before this season was on 17 September 2020, a single-leg Europa League second qualifying round tie against FC Copenhagen played at Ullevi, lost 1-2. Before that they went out of the 2016-17 Europa League to Qarabağ, winning 1-0 at Gamla Ullevi on 18 August 2016 and losing 3-0 in Baku a week later. The 2026-27 campaign is the club's first appearance in the Conference League.
Quotes
No directly quoted material was confirmed from the sources read here. The club's own articles on the Gent draw and the Levadia tie carry no attributed direct speech, and the Swedish newspaper coverage of the tie could not be reached.
Right now (2026/27)
Joachim Björklund has been head coach since 27 July 2026, replacing Stefan Billborn. The summer additions have been mostly free transfers: Hjörtur Hermannsson, the Iceland defender, and Sam Larsson, returning to the club, were both announced on 14 July 2026; Issaka Seidu arrived on loan from Nordsjælland on 8 July; the young forwards Ifeoluwa Olowoporoku and Peter Lazarus signed on 15 and 25 July for undisclosed fees. Imam Jagne is out on loan at Kifisia. Adam Bergmark Wiberg, a free signing earlier in the year, has become important in Europe.
IFK entered the Conference League at the second qualifying round and very nearly went out at once. FCI Levadia Tallinn won the first leg 2-1 at Gamla Ullevi on 21 July 2026 in front of 15,749, Wendell scoring twice and IFK's goal being an Abraham Nwankwo own goal in the second minute of stoppage time. In Tallinn on 30 July, in front of 7,725 at the Lilleküla Stadium, Bergmark Wiberg scored on 57 minutes to level the tie at 2-2 and force extra time, and IFK then went clear through Bergmark Wiberg again on 93 minutes and Saidou Alioum on 103. Maksimilian Skvortsov pulled one back for Levadia in the first minute of stoppage time at the end of extra time. IFK won the match 3-1 and the tie 4-3.
The tie they are in now is the Conference League third qualifying round, main path, against Gent of Belgium. Gent won the first leg 1-0 at Gamla Ullevi on 6 August 2026 in front of 15,468, Hyllarion Goore scoring on the stroke of half-time. The second leg is at the Planet Group Arena in Ghent on 13 August 2026. The winners face the winners of Hibernian against Shkëndija in the play-off round on 20 and 27 August, with the Swedish side, should they progress, at home in the first leg.
Sources
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IFK_G%C3%B6teborg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IFK_G%C3%B6teborg_in_European_football https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_IFK_G%C3%B6teborg_season https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_Allsvenskan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_Allsvenskan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026%E2%80%9327_UEFA_Conference_League_qualifying https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026%E2%80%9327_UEFA_Conference_League_qualifying_(first_and_second_round_matches) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026%E2%80%9327_UEFA_Conference_League_qualifying_(third_and_play-off_round_matches) https://ifkgoteborg.se/nyheter/a-lag/2026/play-off-lottat/ https://ifkgoteborg.se/nyheter/nyheter-notiser/
Researched and written for not4quarters. Where a fact could not be established from the sources read, this page says so rather than guessing.