FC Shakhtar Donetsk
The club
Shakhtar Donetsk were founded on 24 May 1936 as Stakhanovets, playing their first competitive match that year. The club was renamed Shakhtyor (Ukrainian: Shakhtar, meaning "miner") in the mid-1940s, reflecting the coal-mining industry of the Donbas region, and took its present name, FC Shakhtar, after Ukrainian independence in 1992. The club's colours, black and orange, have been official since 1961.
Shakhtar have not played a home match in Donetsk since 2014. War in the Donbas region forced the club to relocate that year, first to Arena Lviv, then in 2017 to the Metalist Stadium in Kharkiv, then in 2020 to the NSC Olimpiyskyi in Kyiv, before the full-scale Russian invasion of 2022 pushed the club back to Arena Lviv, where domestic home games have been played since the 2023/24 season. Their true home remains the Donbas Arena, a 50,149-capacity, UEFA five-star-rated stadium opened in 2009 and used until the war began; the club has said publicly it hopes to return there one day, though chief executive Serhiy Palkin has said the club's own knowledge of the ground's current condition comes only from press reports. For UEFA competition, Shakhtar's home matches have been staged since 2022 at a rotating set of neutral European venues including Hamburg, Warsaw, Gelsenkirchen, Krakow and Ljubljana; for the 2026/27 UEFA Champions League league phase the club reached an agreement with Chelsea to play its home fixtures at Stamford Bridge in London.
The head coach is the Turkish former international Arda Turan, appointed on 27 May 2025 on a two-year contract, taking the club into the 2026/27 season as his second full campaign in charge. He replaced the Bosnian Marino Pušić, who left the club on 24 May 2025 after leading Shakhtar to third place in the Ukrainian Premier League and to the Ukrainian Cup that season.
Recent seasons
Shakhtar were Ukrainian Premier League champions in 2022/23 and again in 2023/24, then finished third in 2024/25 on 62 points from 30 matches (18 wins, 8 draws, 4 defeats, 69 goals scored and 26 conceded) as Dynamo Kyiv took the title, though Shakhtar won the Ukrainian Cup that season, beating Dynamo Kyiv 1-1 after extra time and 6-5 on penalties in the final at the Tsentralnyi Stadion in Zhytomyr on 14 May 2025, their 15th Ukrainian Cup. In 2025/26 Shakhtar won the league back, their 16th Ukrainian Premier League title, finishing on 72 points from 30 matches, 22 wins, 6 draws and 2 defeats, 71 goals scored and 21 conceded; domestically they went out of the Ukrainian Cup in the round of 16 that season.
Honours and landmarks
Shakhtar are Ukraine's most successful club alongside Dynamo Kyiv: 16-time Ukrainian Premier League champions (2001/02, 2004/05, 2005/06, 2007/08, 2009/10, 2010/11, 2011/12, 2012/13, 2013/14, 2016/17, 2017/18, 2018/19, 2019/20, 2022/23, 2023/24 and 2025/26), 15-time Ukrainian Cup winners and nine-time Ukrainian Super Cup winners. In 2009 Shakhtar became the first Ukrainian club since independence to win a UEFA trophy, beating Werder Bremen 2-1 in the UEFA Cup final in Istanbul in what was the competition's last season before its rebrand as the Europa League; the run to that final included wins over Tottenham Hotspur, CSKA Moscow, Marseille and Dynamo Kyiv. In the 2010/11 Champions League, Shakhtar topped a group containing Arsenal, Braga and Partizan, then beat Roma in the round of 16 before losing to Barcelona in the quarter-finals, 6-1 on aggregate. In 2015/16 the club reached the Europa League semi-finals, eliminating Schalke 04, Anderlecht and Braga before losing to eventual champions Sevilla.
Notable scorelines
Shakhtar's biggest recorded European win is 12-0 on aggregate over BATE Borisov in the 2014/15 Champions League group stage, 5-0 at home and 7-0 away, the away leg featuring five goals from Luiz Adriano, matching the Champions League single-match scoring record held by Lionel Messi. Their heaviest European defeat is 7-0 away to Bayern Munich in the second leg of the 2014/15 Champions League round of 16. Shakhtar's all-time domestic record win and record defeat were not established from the sources read here.
European record
Shakhtar have been regular UEFA competition participants for two decades, with the 2008/09 UEFA Cup win as their defining achievement and the 2010/11 Champions League quarter-final and 2015/16 Europa League semi-final as their best knockout runs in the two other major club competitions. In 2024/25 Shakhtar played the Champions League league phase, finishing 27th of 36 with two wins, one draw and five defeats from eight matches, eight goals scored and 16 conceded, their campaign running from 18 September 2024 to 29 January 2025.
In 2025/26, seeded into the Europa League, Shakhtar beat Ilves of Finland 6-0 on aggregate in the first qualifying round (a 6-0 win at a neutral venue in Ljubljana and a 0-0 draw in Finland), then beat Besiktas 2-0 in the second qualifying round, before losing to Panathinaikos in the third qualifying round on penalties, 4-3, on 14 August 2025 after the tie finished level on aggregate. That defeat dropped Shakhtar into the Conference League, where they reached the play-off round and league phase, finishing fifth in the 36-team league phase with 13 points from a 3-1-2 record that included wins over Aberdeen (3-2), Breidablik (2-0) and Shamrock Rovers (2-1), a defeat to Legia Warsaw (1-2) and a 2-0 win over Hamrun, plus a closing 0-0 draw with Rijeka. They then won further knockout rounds, including the quarter-final, before losing in the semi-final to Crystal Palace, beaten 3-1 in the first leg and 2-1 in the second leg at Selhurst Park on 7 May 2026, going out 5-2 on aggregate as Palace reached their first-ever European final.
Shakhtar qualified for the 2026/27 Champions League league phase as Ukrainian champions. The league phase draw paired them at home against Real Madrid, Sporting CP, Fenerbahçe and AEK Athens, and away to Inter, PSV Eindhoven, RB Leipzig and Slovan Bratislava. Their opening league-phase fixture, played at Stamford Bridge as their designated home venue, ended 1-1 against PSV Eindhoven on 10 September 2026 (match detail handled elsewhere in this dossier set).
Quotes
Chief executive Serhiy Palkin responded on 3 February 2026 to FIFA president Gianni Infantino's suggestion that Russia's ban from international football "has not achieved anything" and that Russian teams should be allowed back into competition. Palkin said: "The position from FIFA President Gianni Infantino regarding the possible return of Russian teams to international competitions represents a complete detachment from reality and I am profoundly disappointed by it." He went on to describe the toll of the war: "The reality is this: we have been surviving a full-scale war for four years. Hundreds of thousands of people have been killed. Cities have been destroyed. Civilian, sporting, energy and heating infrastructure has been devastated. The lives of millions of people has been shattered." Palkin also invited Infantino to visit Ukraine and meet Shakhtar players who had lost family members in the war, citing goalkeeper Dmytro Riznyk, whose brother was killed, and defender Denys Tvardovskyi, whose father was killed.
Right now (2026/27)
Arda Turan remains head coach, in his second season since his appointment on 27 May 2025. Shakhtar's most significant summer 2026 departure was midfielder Heorhiy Sudakov, whose move to Benfica was structured in two stages: a loan for the 2025/26 season worth €6.75 million, with a mandatory buyout of €20.25 million completed in the summer of 2026 (bringing the total deal to around €27 million), plus performance-related add-ons of up to €5 million and a sell-on clause of up to 25 percent in Shakhtar's favour. Incoming players for 2026/27 included the Ukraine international Oleksandr Karavayev on a free transfer from Dynamo Kyiv, the Uruguayan defender Alan Matturro from Genoa, the Venezuelan midfielder Gleiker Mendoza from Kryvbas Kryvyi Rih, and the Brazilian forwards Ryan Roberto (from Flamengo) and Bruninho (from Athletico Paranaense), all for fees that were not established from the sources read here.
As of 5 September 2026, Shakhtar sat second in the Ukrainian Premier League after five matches, on 12 points from four wins and one defeat, level on points with leaders Polissya Zhytomyr but behind them on head-to-head record. In Europe, Shakhtar are playing the 2026/27 Champions League league phase with their home fixtures staged at Stamford Bridge under the arrangement with Chelsea, since the club cannot play home matches in Ukraine for security reasons and no longer holds a Champions League home venue on the continent in the way Arena Lviv has served for domestic football. Their opening league-phase match, a 1-1 draw at home to PSV Eindhoven on 10 September 2026, is covered elsewhere in this dossier set.
Sources
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FC_Shakhtar_Donetsk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FC_Shakhtar_Donetsk_in_European_football https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024%E2%80%9325_FC_Shakhtar_Donetsk_season https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025%E2%80%9326_FC_Shakhtar_Donetsk_season https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026%E2%80%9327_FC_Shakhtar_Donetsk_season https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_Ukrainian_Cup_final https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025%E2%80%9326_UEFA_Europa_League_qualifying_phase_and_play-off_round https://www.skysports.com/football/news/11668/13575487/why-are-shakhtar-playing-at-chelsea-stamford-bridge-to-host-exiled-ukrainian-sides-champions-league-home-games https://www.aljazeera.com/sports/2026/8/21/ukraines-shakhtar-donetsk-to-play-champions-league-home-games-at-chelsea https://footballgroundguide.com/where-are-shakhtar-donetsk-playing-ukraine https://www.aa.com.tr/en/sports/shakhtar-donetsk-appoint-arda-turan-as-new-head-coach/3581827 https://www.flashscore.com/news/shakhtar-donetsk-s-ceo-sends-strong-message-to-infantino-over-russia-s-potential-return/K8gCDlIs https://x.com/FCShakhtar_eng/status/2018647222624440475 https://tribuna.com/en/news/2026-02-03-infantino-condemned-as-moral-degenerate-after-calling-for-end-to-russias-football-ban/ https://tribuna.com/en/news/2025-08-30-georgiy-sudakov-completes-27m-move-from-shakhtar-donetsk-to-benfica/ https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2025/08/31/7528628/ https://www.turkiyetoday.com/sports/besiktas-bow-out-of-uefa-europa-league-after-2-0-loss-to-shakhtar-donetsk-3204944 https://www.skysports.com/football/crystal-palace-vs-shakhtar-donetsk/report/554961 https://www.uefa.com/uefaconferenceleague/news/02a5-209210ca6927-41ba4164b0be-1000--crystal-palace-2-1-shakhtar-donetsk-agg-5-2-highlights-i/ https://shakhtar.com/en/news/2026/august/27_news/27_ucl-draw_results/
Researched and written for not4quarters. Where a fact could not be established from the sources read, this page says so rather than guessing.