FK Auda

FK Auda has a long and tumultuous history, as is beholden to a club in continued existence through decades of occupation and sociopolitical change in Latvia. At its inception in 1969, the club was called “9th of May” and was based out of a fisheries cooperatives by the same name, whose members formed a football team and entered at the bottom of the domestic league. The name FK Auda comes from a co-op AUDA, founded in 1991 in Vecmīlgrāvis, a northern district of Rīga, not far from estuary of the river Daugava, which was founded to replace the by then defunct fisheries cooperative. But, as the large-scale fishing industry rapidly began to dwindle, so also began the separation of the football club from its origins.

In 1992-1993, FK Auda was briefly renamed into Riga FK, a famous pre-WW2 football club, but the results did not warrant the association, and the club reverted back to being Auda in 1994. FK Auda first got promoted to the Virslīga in 2002, but only managed to stay in the top flight for two years. Having, effectively, been homeless since the start of the millennium, FK Auda moved from Rīga further inland, to a town called Ķekava, in 2005. There, a new stadium was set up and the club began a long, 17-year journey back into the Virslīga.

FK Auda was promoted for 2021/22 season and, at that point, underwent another transformation, in order to secure the means to fund their participation in the top-tier of Latvia football, the club was assimilated into the “Riga FC group”, who detached the first team from the rest of the club at Ķekava and moved it back to Rīga to share the infrastructure (and players) of Riga FC. The part of the club that was left in Ķekava continues to serve as the academy structure and competes in the 3rd tier as FK ĶEKAVA/AUDA. FK Auda, on the other hand, went on to win the Latvian Cup during their first season back in the top tier, and took their first-ever bronze in 2023.

Auda has a very successful European qualification campaign in the Conference League in 2024, at one point leading competition standings as a club with most wins before getting eliminated in the second leg of the third qualification round. The following year was disappointing by comparison, both domestically and internationally, although Auda did manage to lift their second Latvian Cup, defeating formidable Riga FC in an emotional final and, before that, eliminating 2024 Cup winners RFS in the semi-finals.