Stade Rennais
Also written as Rennes.
The club
Stade Rennais Football Club was founded on 10 March 1901 by former students in Rennes, the capital of Brittany, and took its current name on 23 May 1972 after winning the Coupe de France that year. The club was a founding member of French football's first professional division in 1932. It should not be confused with any other Breton club carrying "Stade" in its name, such as Stade Brestois (Brest), or with Racing Club de Strasbourg, an Alsatian club with no naming or geographic connection; Stade Rennais is the Rennes club, based in Ille-et-Vilaine.
The home ground is Roazhon Park, on the site the club has occupied since 1912, originally known as the Stade de la Route de Lorient. It has been rebuilt in stages, with major work in 1955, 1983 and 1999, and a further reconstruction costing an estimated 37.3 million euros; capacity is 29,778. The club is owned by Groupe Artémis, the holding company of François Pinault, and the president is Arnaud Pouille. Rennes maintain a regional rivalry with FC Nantes known as the Derby Breton, a fixture that also loosely covers matches against Lorient, Guingamp and Brest as the leading clubs of Brittany's five departments; Rennes and Nantes had met 104 times as of October 2023, with Nantes ahead 44 wins to 35.
The club's academy, established in 2000, was rated the best in France in 2010 and has produced Ousmane Dembélé, Eduardo Camavinga and Mathys Tel, among others, and has won the Coupe Gambardella four times. The head coach since 18 February 2026 is Franck Haise, who took over from the caretaker Sébastien Tambouret after Habib Beye was sacked on 9 February 2026.
Recent seasons
Rennes' best-ever Ligue 1 finish is third, achieved in 2019/20. In 2025/26 the club went through two head coaches: Habib Beye left on 9 February 2026 with the team out of form, Sébastien Tambouret took interim charge for one match, and Franck Haise was appointed from 18 February. Rennes finished the season sixth in Ligue 1 with 59 points from 34 matches, 17 wins, 8 draws and 9 defeats, with Esteban Lepaul the club's top scorer on 20 goals in all competitions, all of them in the league. Results across the campaign swung sharply: heavy defeats included 0-5 at home to Paris Saint-Germain in December, 4-0 away to Lorient in August and 4-0 away to Monaco in January, while under Haise the team beat Paris Saint-Germain 3-1 at home in February and won 3-0 away at Auxerre later that month. Earlier in the season Rennes had also beaten Strasbourg 4-1 and Monaco 4-1.
Sixth place in 2025/26 carried a European qualification because that season's Coupe de France winners, Lens, had already secured Champions League football through their league position, so the Europa League berth that would otherwise have gone to the cup winners passed down to Rennes as sixth-placed team in Ligue 1.
Honours and landmarks
Stade Rennais have won the Coupe de France three times, in 1965, 1971 and 2019, and have never won the French league title, their highest finish being third in 2019/20. Their 2020/21 UEFA Champions League campaign was the first time the club had reached the competition's group stage. The academy's four Coupe Gambardella wins (the French youth cup) and the production of players such as Ousmane Dembélé, Eduardo Camavinga and Mathys Tel are treated by the club and French press as landmark achievements in their own right. Full detail of earlier domestic cup runs and any regional honours before professionalisation was not established from the sources read here.
Notable scorelines
Rennes' 2025/26 season alone contained a 3-1 home win over Paris Saint-Germain in February 2026 and a 0-5 home defeat to the same club three months earlier, illustrating the swing in form either side of Franck Haise's appointment. In the Derby Breton against Nantes, the biggest scoreline on record is a 6-1 win for Nantes on 3 September 1969. A precise, sourced list of the club's all-time record win and record defeat in all competitions was not established from the sources read here.
European record
Rennes made their European debut in the 1965/66 European Cup Winners' Cup, against Dukla Prague. As of a count taken in February 2024, the club had played 95 European matches with a record of 37 wins, 19 draws and 39 losses, scoring 134 goals and conceding 131, a win rate of just under 39 per cent. Their strongest showing by win percentage came in the UEFA Europa Conference League, where they won 70 per cent of ten matches played, including topping their 2021/22 group ahead of Tottenham Hotspur, helped by a 3-0 away win awarded after Tottenham forfeited a fixture.
Rennes' only appearance in the Champions League group stage came in 2020/21, in a group with Chelsea, Sevilla and Krasnodar. They drew 1-1 at home to Krasnodar on the opening matchday, lost 1-0 away to Sevilla, lost 3-0 at home and 2-1 away to Chelsea, and lost 1-0 away to Krasnodar, finishing bottom of the four-team group on a single point. The club also reached the final of the Intertoto Cup in 1999. After that Champions League campaign, Rennes went three seasons without European football before returning for 2026/27.
Quotes
Arnaud Pouille, the club's executive president, reacted to the 2026/27 Europa League league-phase draw by saying: "Cela aurait pu être pire, on a évité les clubs anglais" (it could have been worse, we avoided the English clubs). No further directly quoted material from players or the head coach was confirmed from the sources read here.
Right now (2026/27)
Franck Haise is the head coach, having taken permanent charge in February 2026 and carried that form into the new season. Rennes have started 2026/27 strongly: after four Ligue 1 matches, played to 11 September 2026, they were unbeaten with three wins and a draw for 10 points, sitting third and level on points with Lille and Monaco, separated only by goal difference. Results included a 2-2 draw away to Paris Saint-Germain, a 3-2 win over Le Mans, a 2-1 away win at Angers and a 1-0 home win over Marseille. Since Haise's arrival in February 2026, Rennes have taken the second-highest points total in Ligue 1 behind Lille and have had the division's best attack.
Rennes qualified for the 2026/27 UEFA Europa League by finishing sixth in Ligue 1 in 2025/26, a place that carried a European spot because that season's Coupe de France winners, Lens, had already qualified for the Champions League through the league. They go into the Europa League league phase, drawn to play eight opponents: Sturm Graz (away), OFI Crete (home), Juventus (away), Olympiacos (home), NEC Nijmegen (away), Dinamo Zagreb (home), Omonia Nicosia (home) and Sparta Prague (away), fixtures running from mid-September 2026 into January 2027. Full detail of the club's 2026/27 summer transfer business was not established from the sources read here.
Sources
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stade_Rennais_F.C. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025%E2%80%9326_Stade_Rennais_FC_season https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026%E2%80%9327_Stade_Rennais_FC_season https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stade_Rennais_FC_in_European_football https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derby_Breton https://www.stade-rennais-online.com/Ligue-Europa-Rennes-debutera-a-Graz-le-calendrier-complet-est-connu.html https://france3-regions.franceinfo.fr/bretagne/ille-et-vilaine/rennes/ligue-europa-le-stade-rennais-connait-ses-adversaires-dont-un-mastodonte-italien-3407882.html https://ligue1.com/fr/articles/l1_article_5869-la-reussite-rennaise-de-franck-haise
Researched and written for not4quarters. Where a fact could not be established from the sources read, this page says so rather than guessing.