Vestri
The club
Vestri is not Stjarnan and not Víkingur Reykjavík. Where those two clubs are based in and around the capital, Vestri play in Ísafjörður, the main town of the Westfjords in the far north-west of Iceland, several hours by road from Reykjavík. The football department traces back to 1986, when it was founded as part of Badmintonfélag Ísafjarðar (BÍ), a multi-sport club whose first coach was the former Icelandic international Björn Helgason. In 1988, after a rival Ísafjörður club folded, BÍ absorbed its players and became BÍ'88, winning the 4. deild that year with 46 goals scored and only 3 conceded, a run that included an 18-0 win over Höfrungur. The club withdrew from competition after financial trouble in 1996, returned in 2006 as a joint venture with a Bolungarvík club under the name BÍ/Bolungarvík, and in 2016 was folded into a wider multi-sport organisation, Íþróttafélagið Vestri, from which the football team takes the Vestri name.
The ground is Kerecisvöllurinn, also known as Torfnesvöllur, in Ísafjörður, with a capacity of 1,596. The home kit is a red shirt with black shorts and red-and-white hooped socks; the away kit is a white or light shirt with red accents. The manager is the Englishman Daniel Osafo-Badu, appointed in 2025, and the captain is Elmar Atli Garðarsson.
Recent seasons
Vestri won the 1. deild karla promotion playoff final against Afturelding on 30 September 2023, reaching the top-flight Besta deild karla for the first time in the club's history. Their single season in the top division, 2025, was difficult: across the full 27-match campaign, including the relegation round, Vestri finished with 8 wins, 5 draws and 14 losses, 26 goals scored and 44 conceded for 29 points, ending fifth in the relegation group and going down. The season featured an 11-match winless run and the head coach Davíð Smári Lamude was sacked on 29 September 2025, with Jón Þór Hauksson taking over the following day. Vestri return to the second-tier 1. deild karla for the 2026 season; the full 2026 table and points were not confirmed from the sources read here.
Honours and landmarks
Vestri's honours list is short but includes one major trophy: the Icelandic Cup, won in 2025, their first ever major title. Below that sit the 1. deild karla promotion playoff, won in 2023, the 3. deild karla title from 1988, a 3. deild runner-up finish in 2008, and three runner-up finishes in the 2. deild karla, in 1991, 2010 and 2019. The 2025 cup win also carried a landmark of its own: it earned Vestri a place in UEFA competition for the first time in the club's history, in the 2026/27 season.
Notable scorelines
The club's biggest recorded win came early in its history, an 18-0 victory over Höfrungur in the 1988 4. deild campaign, part of a season in which the newly renamed BÍ'88 scored 46 goals and conceded only 3. In 2019 a 7-0 win over Tindastóll in the club's final match of that season secured promotion. The most significant result in the club's history is more recent: a 1-0 win over Valur in the 2025 Icelandic Cup final, Jeppe Pedersen scoring the only goal in the 24th minute at Laugardalsvöllur in Reykjavík in front of 3,979 people, with Sigurður Hjörtur Þrastarson refereeing. On the way to that final Vestri beat HK on penalties after a 3-3 draw, beat Breiðablik in the round of 16, beat Þór Akureyri 2-0 in the quarter-finals and beat Fram on penalties after a 0-0 draw in the semi-final. The club's heaviest defeats in its history were not established from the sources read here, though the 2026/27 European campaign produced two one-sided aggregate losses described below.
European record
Vestri's 2025 Icelandic Cup win brought the club its first ever European fixtures, in the 2026/27 season. In the UEFA Europa League first qualifying round they were drawn against Qarabağ FK of Azerbaijan. The first leg, in Baku at the Tofiq Bahramov Republican Stadium on 9 July 2026, finished Qarabağ 3-0 Vestri in front of 23,549 spectators, with goals from Sawo, Zoubir and Cephas and Roman Jitari of Moldova refereeing. The second leg, at Valbjarnarvöllur in Reykjavík on 16 July 2026, finished Vestri 0-3 Qarabağ in front of a crowd of 474, with goals from Bouaddib, Bicalho and Sawo and Marek Radina of the Czech Republic refereeing; Qarabağ went through 6-0 on aggregate.
As a beaten qualifier from the Europa League path, Vestri dropped into the UEFA Conference League second qualifying round, where they were drawn against FK RFS of Latvia. Vestri drew their home leg 1-1 and lost the away leg 4-1, going out 5-2 on aggregate. Exact dates, goalscorers, attendances and the order of legs for the RFS tie were not confirmed from the sources read here.
Head-to-head notes
No head-to-head record between Vestri and any specific recurring opponent, domestic or European, was established from the sources read here. Vestri had not previously met Qarabağ FK or FK RFS before the 2026/27 qualifying rounds.
Right now (2026/27)
Vestri are out of both European competitions they entered for 2026/27, eliminated 6-0 on aggregate by Qarabağ FK in the Europa League first qualifying round and then 5-2 on aggregate by FK RFS in the Conference League second qualifying round. Domestically the club are playing in the 1. deild karla, the second tier, having been relegated from the Besta deild karla at the end of the 2025 season. Daniel Osafo-Badu remains the manager. The current 2026 league table, Vestri's position within it, and any summer squad business were not confirmed from the sources read here.
Sources
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vestri_(football_club) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vestri_(men's_football) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_Icelandic_Cup https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026%E2%80%9327_UEFA_Europa_League_qualifying_phase_and_play-off_round https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026%E2%80%9327_UEFA_Conference_League_qualifying_phase_and_play-off_round https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_Besta_deild_karla
Researched and written for not4quarters. Where a fact could not be established from the sources read, this page says so rather than guessing.