Shakhtar Donetsk

F. K. Shakhtar Donetsk (in Ukrainian: ФК Шахтар Донецьк), known internationally by its English transcription Shakhtar Donetsk, is a football team from the city of Donetsk. It currently plays in the Ukrainian Premier League, the country's top division.

The club played its home matches until 2014 at the Donbass Arena, which opened in 2009 and has a capacity of 52,187 spectators. However, in order to keep competing in domestic and European competitions, such as the UEFA Champions League, Shakhtar had to leave its stadium owing to the outbreak of the war in Donbas between Ukrainian forces and pro-Russian militias in the region.

Despite this situation, the team qualified for the round of 16 of the 2014-15 Champions League, falling to Bayern Munich with an aggregate score of 0-7. The club had to play its home matches at the Arena Lviv in the western city of Lviv, almost 1,000 kilometers from its original home. Meanwhile, its administrative headquarters and training center were relocated to the Ukrainian capital.

Subsequently, in February 2017, they moved base again, to the city of Kharkiv, where they would play their matches until 2020, when they settled in Kyiv to use the NSC Olimpiyskiy as their temporary stadium.

The club's history dates from the beginning of Soviet football league competitions, and it is one of the oldest clubs in Ukraine. The club was a member of the Soviet Voluntary Sports Society Shakhtyor, which has connections with other Soviet teams from Karaganda (Kazakhstan) or Soligorsk (Belarus). The Donetsk club is closely tied to the industrialized culture of Ukraine's Donets Basin.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Shakhtar joined the Ukrainian Premier League. In 1995 it won its first title in independent Ukrainian football, the Ukrainian Cup. In 2002 it won its first league title, and two years later it signed the coach Mircea Lucescu, with whom it experienced the best period in its history, winning eight league titles, six cups, seven supercups and one UEFA Cup.