Tromsø IL
Also written as Tromso, Tromso IL.
The club
Tromsø Idrettslag were founded on 15 September 1920 and are the northernmost club in top-flight European football, based 350km inside the Arctic Circle. They are known as Gutan, the Boys. The home ground is the Romssa Arena, capacity 6,691, previously called the Alfheim Stadion. The club colours are red and white. Stig Bjorklund is chairman and Jorgen Vik is head coach.
The feed writes the name without the Norwegian letter, as "Tromso".
Recent seasons
Tromsø finished third in the 2023 Eliteserien with 61 points from 30 matches, 19 wins, 4 draws and 7 defeats, 48 goals scored and 33 conceded. That was followed by a collapse to 13th in 2024 on 33 points, nine wins and fifteen defeats, and then a recovery to third again in 2025 on 57 points, 18 wins, 3 draws and 9 defeats, 50 scored and 36 conceded. Third place in 2025 is what put them into Europe this summer.
Norway plays a summer season. As of 9 August 2026 Tromsø were third in the Eliteserien again, behind Bodo/Glimt on 41 from 17 and Viking on 40 from 16, with 34 points from 16 matches, ten wins, four draws and two defeats, 32 goals scored and 17 conceded. Heine Asen Larsen and Jens Hjerto-Dahl have seven league goals each; Asen Larsen has ten in all competitions.
Honours and landmarks
Tromsø have won the Norwegian Cup twice, in 1986 and 1996, and were runners-up in 2012. They have never won the league: runners-up in 1990 and 2011, third in 1989, 2008, 2010, 2023 and 2025. They won the 1. divisjon in 2002 and 2020 and came up through the play-offs in 1985. They were Northern Norwegian champions in 1931, 1949 and 1956.
Notable scorelines
The result Tromsø are best known for outside Norway is 3-2 against Chelsea at the Alfheim Stadion in the second round of the 1997/98 Cup Winners' Cup, a match played in such heavy snow that it has been remembered for the conditions as much as the football; Steinar Nilsen, Frode Fermann and Ole Martin Arst scored. The return at Stamford Bridge finished 7-1 to Chelsea, 9-4 on aggregate.
The biggest win is 10-0 against Havnar Boltfelag of the Faroe Islands in the 1995 Intertoto Cup. The heaviest recent defeats are two 0-5 results in the 2026 Eliteserien, at home to Brann on 29 April and away to Bodo/Glimt on 16 May. The club's all-time record defeat was not established from the sources read here.
European record
Tromsø's European history is long and mostly made up of qualifying rounds, with a handful of nights that Norwegian football still talks about.
They first played in Europe in 1987, in the Cup Winners' Cup after the 1986 cup win, losing 1-0 at St Mirren and drawing 0-0 at home. Tirol Innsbruck knocked them out of the 1991 UEFA Cup. In 1995 they played the Intertoto Cup, drawing 2-2 at Aarau, beating Havnar Boltfelag 10-0 at home and Universitatea Cluj 1-0 away, then losing 2-0 at home to Germinal Ekeren to finish third in the group.
The 1997/98 Cup Winners' Cup brought the club's first European win and first progress past a round. Trailing 3-0 in Zagreb, Bjorn Johansen and Ole Martin Arst pulled it back to 3-2; at home the tie went to extra time after Svein Morten Johansen equalised a minute into stoppage time, and Rune Lange won it. Chelsea followed, and the 3-2 in the snow.
In 2005 Tromsø beat Esbjerg on penalties in UEFA Cup qualifying after Lars Iver Strand's goal had given them their first away win in Europe, then beat Galatasaray, 1-0 at home through Tamas Szekeres and 1-1 at the Ali Sami Yen. In the group stage they lost 2-1 at home to Roma, 2-0 at Strasbourg and 4-3 at Basel, and beat Red Star Belgrade 3-1 at home, Arst scoring twice; they finished bottom.
In 2009/10 they beat Dinamo Minsk 4-1 on aggregate and Slaven Belupo, then lost 4-3 on aggregate to Athletic Bilbao across two legs decided by two contested penalties. In 2011/12 they beat Daugava 7-1 on aggregate and lost to Paks. In 2012/13 they beat Olimpija Ljubljana and Metalurh Donetsk and lost the play-off to Partizan on away goals after winning the first leg 3-2. In 2013/14 they entered as Norway's fair play qualifier, beat Celje, Inter Baku and Differdange, lost the play-off 3-2 to Besiktas, and were then reinstated into the group stage when the Court of Arbitration for Sport disqualified Besiktas. Drawn with Tottenham Hotspur, Anzhi Makhachkala and Sheriff Tiraspol, they finished bottom with a single point from a 1-1 draw with Sheriff at Alfheim. Their most recent previous European outing was the third qualifying round of the 2024/25 Conference League.
In 2026/27 Tromsø entered the Europa League at the second qualifying round and lost to Hradec Kralove of the Czech Republic, beaten 1-0 at the Romssa Arena on 23 July in front of 5,082 and 3-1 in Hradec Kralove on 30 July in front of 9,300, out 4-1 on aggregate. That dropped them into the Conference League.
Quotes
- "Leon er en spiller vi har fulgt med på lenge, og vi mener han vil passe godt inn hos oss og i alt vi skal gjennom fremover." - Lars Petter Andressen, quoted by Tromsø IL on the loan signing of Leon Hien, 5 August 2026. The article read here did not state his role at the club. In English: Leon is a player we have followed for a long time, and we think he will fit in well with us and with everything we have coming up. https://www.til.no/nyheter/leon-hien-klar-for-tromso-il
No other directly quoted material was confirmed from the sources read here. The club's own preview of the second leg against CFR Cluj, published on 7 August 2026, carries no attributed quotes, and no report of the first leg containing verbatim comment from Jorgen Vik or his players could be confirmed.
Right now (2026/27)
Jorgen Vik is head coach and this is Tromsø's 106th year and sixth consecutive season in the top flight. Recent business: the Swedish defender Leon Hien joined on loan from Djurgarden until the end of the season on 5 August 2026, and on 2 August the club confirmed it was in negotiations over a transfer for Jens Hjerto-Dahl, joint top scorer in the league this season.
Domestically Tromsø sit third in the Eliteserien on 34 points from 16 matches as of 9 August 2026. Their best home attendance this year was 6,027 against Rosenborg on 6 April.
The European tie they are in right now is the Conference League third qualifying round, Main Path, against CFR Cluj, and the first leg could hardly have gone better. Tromsø won 5-0 at the Dr Constantin Radulescu Stadium in Cluj-Napoca on 6 August 2026 in front of 6,729, Heine Asen Larsen scoring on 5 and 20 minutes and Isak Dahlqvist adding a hat-trick on 27, 61 and 74. Patrik Kolaric of Croatia refereed. It is the club's biggest win of the season. The second leg is at the Romssa Arena on Thursday 13 August 2026 at 19:00, with Gustavo Correia of Portugal in charge. The winners meet Brighton and Hove Albion in the play-off round on 20 and 27 August 2026.
Sources
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troms%C3%B8_IL https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_Troms%C3%B8_IL_season https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_Eliteserien https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026%E2%80%9327_UEFA_Europa_League_qualifying 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_(third_and_play-off_round_matches) https://www.til.no/nyheter https://www.til.no/nyheter/leon-hien-klar-for-tromso-il https://www.til.no/nyheter/det-skal-avgjores-pa-romssa-arena https://www.til.no/nyheter/gutan-skal-til-romania
Researched and written for not4quarters. Where a fact could not be established from the sources read, this page says so rather than guessing.