HJK Helsinki
Also written as HJK.
The club
Helsingin Jalkapalloklubi were founded on 19 June 1907 and are the most successful club in Finnish football. They are known simply as Klubi, the Club. The home ground is the Töölö Football Stadium in Helsinki, capacity 10,770, opened in 2000 and known for much of its life as the Bolt Arena. HJK play in blue and white. The chairman is Olli-Pekka Lyytikäinen and the head coach is Joonas Rantanen.
The football feed calls them simply "HJK".
Recent seasons
HJK won the Veikkausliiga four years in a row from 2020 to 2023 under Toni Koskela and then Toni Korkeakunnas, the 2022 title being an eleventh in fifteen years and the 2023 one settled on goal difference from KuPS. The wheels came off after that. The club finished third in 2024, a season that began with the appointment of Ferran Sibila as head coach and immediately unravelled when it emerged he did not hold the UEFA Pro licence required to work in the Veikkausliiga; Ossi Virta was named interim head coach on 12 January 2024, and both Sibila and sporting director Vesa Maki were dismissed on 20 May, with Korkeakunnas brought back.
The 2025 season was worse. HJK opened it with a record six-game losing streak, Korkeakunnas was sacked on 4 May after a 1-1 draw with Inter Turku, and Miika Nuutinen took interim charge for the rest of the year. The club finished fifth of twelve. The one bright spot was the Finnish Cup, won on 20 September 2025 with a 1-0 defeat of KuPS, Teemu Pukki scoring the winner. It was HJK's first cup since 2020.
Honours and landmarks
HJK have won the Finnish championship 33 times, from 1911 through to 2023, and been runners-up 14 times. They have won the Finnish Cup 15 times, most recently in 2025, and the Finnish League Cup six times, most recently in 2023. The club's women's side has won 24 Finnish championships.
HJK's record average attendance was 8,058 in the 1969 season, when they played at Töölön Pallokenttä. Teemu Pukki's move to Schalke 04 in August 2011 for 1.8m euros remains the record transfer fee out of the Veikkausliiga.
Notable scorelines
The two results the club is defined by are European. In the 1998/99 Champions League group stage, the only time a Finnish club has reached it, HJK beat Benfica at home and drew with Kaiserslautern at home and Benfica away for five points. In the 2014/15 Europa League group stage, another Finnish first, they beat Torino and Copenhagen at home and finished third on six points.
The most extraordinary two-legged swing in the club's recent history came in July 2025: beaten 4-0 away by NSÍ Runavík of the Faroe Islands in the Conference League first qualifying round, HJK won the home leg 5-0 to go through. The club's all-time record win and record defeat were not established from the sources read here.
European record
To 22 April 2026 HJK had played 206 matches in UEFA competition, winning 68, drawing 36 and losing 102, with 252 goals scored and 371 conceded. That breaks down as 85 games in the Champions League, 78 in the UEFA Cup and Europa League, 12 in the Cup Winners' Cup, 24 in the Conference League and four in the Intertoto Cup.
The landmarks: HJK reached the 1998/99 Champions League group stage by beating Metz in the second qualifying round, and remain the only Finnish club to have played in it. They reached the 2014/15 Europa League group stage by beating Rapid Wien in the play-off, the first Finnish club to get there. In 2021 they reached the Europa Conference League group stage and finished third on six points. In 2022 they made the Europa League group stage for a second time by beating Silkeborg 2-1 on aggregate in the play-off, and were drawn with Roma, Real Betis and Ludogorets; they lost all three away matches 0-7 in aggregate goals and took a single point, from a 1-1 draw at home with Ludogorets. In 2023 Korkeakunnas took them to a third straight European group stage, beating the Romanian champions Farul Constanta 3-2 on aggregate in the Conference League play-off. In 2024, having gone out of the Champions League at the first hurdle to Panevezys, they reached the new Conference League league phase by beating KI Klaksvik 3-2 on aggregate with two stoppage-time goals, a fourth consecutive appearance in a European final phase. Lee Erwin scored five goals in six qualifying matches that summer, three of them across the two games with Klaksvik.
The 2025/26 campaign ended early: after the 4-0 and 5-0 swing against NSÍ Runavík, HJK went out to Arda Kardzhali of Bulgaria on penalties in the second qualifying round on 31 July 2025.
In 2026/27 HJK entered the Conference League second qualifying round as Finnish Cup holders and beat Coleraine of Northern Ireland 8-0 on aggregate, winning 5-0 at home on 23 July in front of 4,287 and 3-0 in Coleraine on 30 July in front of 1,028.
Quotes
- "Kun katsoo pelinkuvaa ensimmäiseltä jaksolta, ajattelen tämän olleen peli, jossa oli mahdollisuus ottaa voitto." - Joonas Rantanen, HJK head coach, on the club's own site after the Motherwell first leg, 7 August 2026. In English: looking at the first half, I think this was a game in which there was a chance to take the win. https://www.hjk.fi/uutiset/teemu-pukki-nosti-klubin-tasapeliin-ratkaisu-siirtyy-toiseen-osaotteluun
- "Tokalle puoliajalle he muuttivat vähän asioita ja pystyivät ohittamaan prässin, ja jakson alku oli meiltä heikko." - Joonas Rantanen, HJK head coach, same article, 7 August 2026. In English: for the second half they changed a few things and were able to get past our press, and the start of that half was weak from us. https://www.hjk.fi/uutiset/teemu-pukki-nosti-klubin-tasapeliin-ratkaisu-siirtyy-toiseen-osaotteluun
- "Vikalla kympillä mielestäni meidän olisi pitänyt saada vielä enemmän painetta aikaan." - Joonas Rantanen, HJK head coach, same article, 7 August 2026. In English: in the last ten minutes I think we should have generated still more pressure. https://www.hjk.fi/uutiset/teemu-pukki-nosti-klubin-tasapeliin-ratkaisu-siirtyy-toiseen-osaotteluun
- "Varmaan oikeutettu lopputulos. Lopussa oli toiveissa, että olisimme saaneet käännettyä pelin voitoksi." - Teemu Pukki, HJK forward and scorer of the equaliser, on the club's own site, 7 August 2026. In English: probably a fair result; towards the end we had hoped we might have turned the game into a win. https://www.hjk.fi/uutiset/teemu-pukki-nosti-klubin-tasapeliin-ratkaisu-siirtyy-toiseen-osaotteluun
- "Kaikki on oikeastaan vielä auki, mutta se vaatii meiltä hyvää matsia vieraissa." - Teemu Pukki, HJK forward, same article, 7 August 2026. In English: everything is really still open, but it requires a good away performance from us. https://www.hjk.fi/uutiset/teemu-pukki-nosti-klubin-tasapeliin-ratkaisu-siirtyy-toiseen-osaotteluun
All five quotes were published in Finnish; the Finnish is verbatim and the English is a translation, not a published version. No further attributed quotes were confirmed from the sources read here.
Right now (2026/27)
Joonas Rantanen has been head coach since 1 January 2026, the club's fifth change in the dugout in three years. Teemu Pukki, back at the club he left for Schalke in 2011, is still scoring the important goals.
Finland plays a summer season, so HJK are mid-campaign rather than starting one. As of 9 August 2026 they were third in the Veikkausliiga on 31 points from 19 matches, nine wins, four draws and six defeats, 29 goals scored and 23 conceded, behind KuPS on 40 and Inter Turku on 35, both also from 19. The regular season runs to 22 rounds before the split into championship and relegation rounds, so three matches of it remain. The club's summer transfer business was not established from the sources read here.
The European tie they are in right now is the Conference League third qualifying round, Main Path, against Motherwell. The first leg at the Töölö Football Stadium on 6 August 2026 finished 1-1 in front of 7,023. Tawanda Maswanhise put Motherwell ahead from the penalty spot on 64 minutes; Pukki, who had come on as a substitute, equalised on 71. Dalibor Cerny of the Czech Republic refereed. The second leg is at Fir Park on 13 August 2026, with Michal Ocenas of Slovakia in charge, and HJK will be playing on grass rather than the artificial surface at the Töölö Football Stadium. The winners meet SC Freiburg in the play-off round on 20 and 27 August 2026.
Sources
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helsingin_Jalkapalloklubi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_Veikkausliiga https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_Veikkausliiga 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://www.hjk.fi/uutiset/teemu-pukki-nosti-klubin-tasapeliin-ratkaisu-siirtyy-toiseen-osaotteluun https://www.hjk.fi/artikkelit/miehet/
Researched and written for not4quarters. Where a fact could not be established from the sources read, this page says so rather than guessing.