Royale Union Saint-Gilloise
Also written as Royale Union SG.
The club
Royale Union Saint-Gilloise were founded on 1 November 1897 in Saint-Gilles, one of the nineteen communes that make up the Brussels-Capital Region, and carry the Belgian federation's matricule number 10. The club later relocated to the neighbouring commune of Forest and have played at the Joseph Marien Stadium since the 1920s. Colours are blue and yellow.
Union Saint-Gilloise are not RSC Anderlecht and not KAA Gent, the other two Belgian clubs already covered in this corpus, and the distinction matters because all three sit at or near the top of the Belgian game today. Anderlecht are also a Brussels club, but they are based in the separate commune of Anderlecht, to the west of the city centre, and are by far the more decorated of the two in the modern era, with 34 championships to Union's twelve; Union's own great period was mostly won and lost before the Second World War. Gent are a different club in a different city altogether, the East Flanders city of Ghent, with a single Belgian title, from 2014-15. Union's home turf in Saint-Gilles and Forest is its own distinct corner of Brussels, separate from Anderlecht's.
The club dominated the early decades of Belgian football, winning eleven national titles between 1903-04 and 1934-35, including a run of three in a row from 1932-33 to 1934-35 during which Union went 60 league matches unbeaten, a national record that still stands. Relegation followed in 1963, and by 1980 the club had fallen as far as the fourth tier of Belgian football. Union spent close to four decades shuttling between the second and third divisions before finally returning to the top flight in 2021, 48 years after their last season there.
The modern revival has an identifiable financial root: the British businessman Tony Bloom, chairman of Brighton & Hove Albion, became majority shareholder on 21 May 2018. Alex Muzio became majority owner and chairman on 7 July 2023. The current head coach is the Belgian David Hubert; the sports director is the Irishman Chris O'Loughlin. Union's principal rivalry, known as the Zwanze derby, is with fellow Brussels club RWD Molenbeek, with a secondary rivalry against Anderlecht that revived after a long gap dating back to 1979. The club is also known for a welcoming, family-oriented matchday atmosphere and for openly anti-fascist and anti-racist supporter culture, though the detail of that culture was not established beyond this general characterisation from the sources read here.
Recent seasons
Union's return from the second tier was immediate and dramatic. In 2021-22, their first season back in the top flight, they finished the regular season top of the table with 77 points, five points clear of Club Brugge, and were described by Wikipedia's account as the first newly promoted club to finish a Belgian top-flight regular season in first place. They lost out in the championship play-offs, finishing the season second with 46 play-off points. In 2022-23 they were again second after the regular season, and suffered a bruising finish to the play-offs: leading Club Brugge 1-0 at home in the 89th minute of the deciding fixture, with the other contender already ahead 2-1 elsewhere, they conceded three goals including two in stoppage time and finished the season third.
The following two seasons brought the breakthroughs that had eluded them. In 2023-24 Union won the regular season with an eight-point lead over Anderlecht, then finished the play-offs as runners-up, one point behind Club Brugge, but won the Belgian Cup on 9 May 2024, beating Royal Antwerp 1-0 in the final, 110 years after the club's previous cup success. In 2024-25 Union were third after the regular season but went unbeaten through the championship play-offs, nine wins and a draw, and closed the season with a 3-1 win over Gent that secured a twelfth Belgian league title and ended a 90-year wait since their previous one, in 1934-35. They also won the Belgian Super Cup that year, beating Club Brugge 2-1, and secured a first-ever place in the UEFA Champions League league phase. In 2025-26 Union again topped the regular-season table, three points clear of Club Brugge, and won the Belgian Cup again, beating Anderlecht 3-1 after extra time in the final, but lost the championship play-offs after a 5-0 defeat to Club Brugge, finishing runners-up.
Honours and landmarks
Union Saint-Gilloise have won the Belgian league championship twelve times: 1903-04, 1904-05, 1905-06, 1906-07, 1908-09, 1909-10, 1912-13, 1922-23, 1932-33, 1933-34, 1934-35 and 2024-25. They have won the Belgian Cup twice, in 2024 and 2026, and the Belgian Super Cup once, in 2024. The 60-match unbeaten league run of 1933-35 remains a Belgian record. The club's return to the Champions League league phase in 2025-26 was its first ever appearance at that stage of the competition.
Notable scorelines
In the 2022-23 Europa League group stage Union won their group with four wins from six matches, against Union Berlin, Braga and Malmö, and then beat Union Berlin in the round of 16, drawing 3-3 away before winning 3-0 at home (the home leg was played at Anderlecht's Lotto Park rather than the Joseph Marien Stadium). They lost the quarter-final to Bayer Leverkusen 5-2 on aggregate, drawing 1-1 away before losing 1-4 at home. In the 2023-24 Europa League group stage, drawn with Liverpool, Toulouse and LASK, Union beat Liverpool 2-1. That season's Conference League knockout stage saw them eliminate Eintracht Frankfurt 4-3 on aggregate, a 2-2 draw followed by a 2-1 win, before losing in the round of 16 to Fenerbahçe. In the 2025-26 Champions League league phase Union beat PSV Eindhoven 3-1 at home on matchday one and lost 2-0 away to Arsenal, and also recorded wins over Galatasaray and Atalanta among their eight fixtures. Exact scorelines for those last two wins, and the club's all-time record win and record defeat in any competition, were not established from the sources read here.
European record
Union reached the Champions League qualifying rounds for the first time in the modern era in 2022-23, beating Rangers 2-0 at home before losing 3-0 away and going out on aggregate; they dropped into the Europa League, where they won their group and beat Union Berlin in the round of 16 before losing to Bayer Leverkusen in the quarter-finals, described above. In 2023-24 they again went out of Europa League group-stage company into the Conference League knockout rounds, beating Eintracht Frankfurt before losing to Fenerbahçe in the round of 16.
In 2024-25 Union lost their Champions League qualifying tie to Slavia Prague 4-1 on aggregate, which sent them into the Europa League league phase; they finished 21st and progressed to a play-off round against Ajax as an unseeded team, though the outcome of that tie was not established from the sources read here. In 2025-26 Union reached the Champions League league phase itself for the first time, entering as one of four debutant clubs and drawn in the competition's lowest seeding pot with a coefficient of 36.000. They finished 27th of 36 with nine points from three wins and five defeats in eight matches, beating PSV Eindhoven, Galatasaray and Atalanta among opponents that also included Arsenal, Bayern Munich, Inter Milan, Atlético Madrid, Marseille and Newcastle United, and did not advance to the knockout phase.
Head-to-head notes
Union's most storied rivalry, the Zwanze derby, is with RWD Molenbeek, another Brussels club. Their rivalry with Anderlecht, the city's dominant modern club, dates back decades but had a long dormant period before being rekindled after Union's return to the top flight; specific results between the two clubs were not established from the sources read here, beyond the 2026 Belgian Cup final, which Union won 3-1 after extra time. Head-to-head records against Club Brugge, the club that has denied Union the title in play-offs on multiple recent occasions, were not established from the sources read here.
Quotes
No directly quoted material was confirmed from the sources read here.
Right now (2026/27)
David Hubert remains head coach. Union entered the 2026-27 Champions League qualifying rounds as the previous season's Belgian runners-up and reached the third qualifying round, where they were eliminated by FK Bodø/Glimt: a 3-3 draw at home on 4 August 2026, followed by a 3-2 defeat after extra time away on 11 August 2026, going out 6-5 on aggregate. That defeat sent Union into the Europa League league phase for 2026-27. Before the season began they won the Belgian Super Cup on 31 July 2026, beating Club Brugge in a penalty shootout after a 1-1 draw; the precise shootout score was not confirmed from the sources read here.
Domestically, Union sat in mid-table in the Belgian Pro League as of 23 August 2026, unbeaten in their opening matches, though the sources read here gave an internally inconsistent points tally and the exact league record was not confirmed. Summer transfer activity has brought in the Romanian midfielder Darius Olaru from FCSB, the South African midfielder Relebohile Mofokeng from Orlando Pirates, and the forward Raul Florucz from NK Olimpija Ljubljana, while the goalkeeper Kjell Scherpen left for Ipswich Town and the midfielder Anan Khalaili left for Crystal Palace. Further detail on the current squad and the Europa League league-phase draw was not established from the sources read here.
Sources
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royale_Union_Saint-Gilloise https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belgian_Pro_League https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026%E2%80%9327_Royale_Union_Saint-Gilloise_season https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025%E2%80%9326_UEFA_Champions_League_league_phase
Researched and written for not4quarters. Where a fact could not be established from the sources read, this page says so rather than guessing.