Latvian Higher League or Virslīga is a professional football league and the top tier of association football in

Latvia Latvia ( or ; lv, Latvija ; ltg, Latveja; liv, Leţmō), officially the Republic of Latvia ( lv, Latvijas Republika, links=no, ltg, Latvejas Republika, links=no, liv, Leţmō Vabāmō, links=no), is a country in the Baltic region of ...

. Organised by the

Latvian Football Federation The Latvian Football Federation (LFF) ( lv, Latvijas Futbola federācija) is the governing body of football in Latvia with its headquarters located in the capital Rimi Sports Centre in Riga. Its activities include the organizing of the Latvian ...

, the Higher League is contested by 10 clubs. The full name of the league is Optibet Virslīga for sponsorship reasons since 2019.

History and league format

History

The first all-national Latvian championship, which succeeded the Riga Football League and other regional leagues, was organized in 1927, which lasted until the

Soviet occupation of Latvia in 1940 The Soviet occupation of Latvia in 1940 refers to the military occupation of the Republic of Latvia by the Soviet Union under the provisions of the 1939 Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact with Nazi Germany and its Secret Additional Protocol signed in A ...

. After

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

, between 1945 and 1991 the championship of Soviet Latvia was the main footballing competition in the

Latvian SSR The Latvian Soviet Socialist Republic (Latvian SSR), also known as Soviet Latvia or simply Latvia, was a federated republic within the Soviet Union, and formally one of its 16 (later 15) constituent republics. The Latvian Soviet Socialist Rep ...

. With Latvia regaining full independence in August 1991, the newly established Latvian Football Federation (LFF) decided to reorganise its competitions within the Virslīga from 1992. The same year Latvia returned to

FIFA FIFA (; stands for ''Fédération Internationale de Football Association'' ( French), meaning International Association Football Federation ) is the international governing body of association football, beach football and futsal. It was found ...

and became a member of

UEFA Union of European Football Associations (UEFA ; french: Union des associations européennes de football; german: Union der europäischen Fußballverbände) is one of six continental bodies of governance in association football. It governs f ...

Format

After the 2007 season the league increased from eight to ten sides. In 2008 each side played the others four times. From 2015 till 2018 there were eight participating clubs. This was increased to nine for the 2019 season and ten for the 2020 season. At the end of the season, the lowest placed team are automatically relegated into 1. līga, and the winner of the 1. līga automatically takes their place. The second lowest placed team in Virslīga and the second team of 1. līga play two matches for a place in the Virslīga the following season. The winner of Virslīga, the champion of Latvia, plays in the UEFA Champions League qualifying round. The second and third placed clubs play in the UEFA Europa League qualifying games. A winter off-season league cup, the Virslīga Winter Cup, was played in January of each year from 2013 to 2017, which was replaced in 2018 by the Virslīga Cup (). There again will be 10 teams in 2022 season. Last year participant
RFSValmiera FCFK LiepājaRiga FCFK Spartaks JūrmalaBFC Daugavpils
an
FK Metta
will be joined by newcomer
FK Auda
FK Tukums 2000/Telms and

SK Super Nova SK Super Nova is a Latvian association football Association football, more commonly known as football or soccer, is a team sport played between two teams of 11 players who primarily use their feet to propel the ball around a rectangular ...

Sponsorships and name changes

The League has changed sponsors for several times. From 2005 until 2010 it was known as the LMT Virslīga. No sponsorships were established for the 2011 season. Starting from the 2012 season, the league was reorganised in partnership with an NGO as "Latvijas Futbola virslīga", adopting the NGO's name in the 2012 season. From 2013 to 2015, the league was known as the SMScredit.lv Virslīga due to a contract with the online microfinance company SMScredit. In March 2016, it was announced that the Virslīga would be sponsored by SynotTip

Sports Bar Bar or BAR may refer to: Food and drink * Bar (establishment), selling alcoholic beverages * Candy bar * Chocolate bar Science and technology * Bar (river morphology), a deposit of sediment * Bar (tropical cyclone), a layer of cloud * Bar (u ...

on a three-year contract. They were succeeded by

betting Gambling (also known as betting or gaming) is the wagering of something of value ("the stakes") on a random event with the intent of winning something else of value, where instances of strategy are discounted. Gambling thus requires three elem ...

firm Optibet on a two-year contract, beginning with the 2019 season.

Clubs (2022)

Titles by year

Source:

Riga Football League

* 1908 British FC * 1909 RV Union * 1910 RV Union * 1911 Britannia FC * 1912 RV Union * 1913 SV Kaiserwald * 1914 Britannia FC * 1915 Britannia FC

Latvian Championship 1922–1940 (independent)

* 1922

Kaiserwald Riga Kaiserswald was a Latvian football club from Riga Riga (; lv, Rīga , liv, Rīgõ) is the capital and largest city of Latvia and is home to 605,802 inhabitants which is a third of Latvia's population. The city lies on the Gulf of Riga at ...

* 1923

* 1924 RFK Riga * 1925 RFK Riga * 1926 RFK Riga * 1927

Olimpia Liepaja Olimpija Liepāja was a Latvian football club. It was based in Liepāja Liepāja (; liv, Līepõ; see other names) is a state city in western Latvia, located on the Baltic Sea. It is the largest-city in the Kurzeme Region and the third-larges ...

* 1928

* 1929

* 1930 RFK Riga * 1931 RFK Riga * 1932

ASK Riga ASK Rīga is a former professional basketball club that was based in Riga, Latvia. "ASK" stood for "Armijas Sporta Klubs" (in English: Army Sports Club). History BK Rīga was then founded in 2004, and it got back the original name of ASK R ...

* 1933

* 1934 RFK Riga * 1935 RFK Riga * 1936

* 1937 ''Not Played'' * 1938

* 1939

* 1940 RFK Riga

Football Championship of Latvian SSR 1942–1990

* 1942

* 1944

Elektrons Riga Elektrons Rīga (also known as FK Alfa) was a Latvian football club from Riga that was one of the leading clubs in the Latvian league in the 1970s and 1980s. History Elektrons was founded somewhere in the 1960s (exact year has to be determined) ...

* 1980 Kimiks Daugavpils * 1981

* 1982

* 1983 VEF Riga * 1984 Torpedo Riga * 1985 Alfa Riga * 1986 Torpedo Riga * 1987 Torpedo Riga * 1988

RAF Jelgava RAF Jelgava was a Latvian football (soccer), football club based in Jelgava.The foundation of the club is considered in 1988 and for the first two years there were two teams of RAF Jelgava which in 1990 merged into one. One of those played in the ...

* 1989

* 1990

Gauja Valmiera Gauja Valmiera was a Latvian football club from Valmiera that played in the top Latvian league from 1979 to 1993. It was named after the river Gauja. In the 1990s another Valmiera football club – FK Valmiera – was renamed to Gauja ...

Since independence in 1991

*1991

Skonto Riga Skonto FC was a Latvian football club, active from 1991 until 2016. The club played at the Skonto Stadium in Riga. Skonto won the Virsliga in the first 14 seasons of the league's resumption (15 in total), and often provided the core of the Lat ...

*1992

*1993

*1994

*1995

*1996

*1997

*1998

*1999

*2000

*2001

*2002

*2003

*2004

*2005 Liepajas Metalurgs *2006

FK Ventspils FK Ventspils is a Latvian football club, based at Ventspils Olimpiskais Stadions in Ventspils city and is one of the most popular football clubs in the country. The club played in the Latvian Virsliga since 1997. It was abolished in 2020, but h ...

*2007

*2008

*2009 Liepajas Metalurgs *2010

*2011

*2012 Daugava Daugavpils *2013

*2014

*2015 FK Liepaja *2016 JPFS/FK Spartaks Jurmala *2017 JPFS/FK Spartaks Jurmala *

2018 File:2018 Events Collage.png, From top left, clockwise: The 2018 Winter Olympics opening ceremony in PyeongChang, South Korea; Protests erupt following the Assassination of Jamal Khashoggi; March for Our Lives protests take place across the United ...

Riga FC Riga Football Club, commonly referred to as Riga FC, is a Latvian football club, founded in 2014. The club is based at the Skonto Stadium in Riga. Since 2016 the club has been playing in the Virslīga. History The club was officially registered ...

2019 File:2019 collage v1.png, From top left, clockwise: Hong Kong protests turn to widespread riots and civil disobedience; House of Representatives votes to adopt articles of impeachment against Donald Trump; CRISPR gene editing first used to experim ...

2020 2020 was heavily defined by the COVID-19 pandemic, which led to global Social impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, social and Economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, economic disruption, mass cancellations and postponements of events, COVID- ...

2021 File:2021 collage V2.png, From top left, clockwise: the James Webb Space Telescope was launched in 2021; Protesters in Yangon, Myanmar following the 2021 Myanmar coup d'état, coup d'état; A civil demonstration against the October–November 2021 ...

RFS *

2022 File:2022 collage V1.png, Clockwise, from top left: Road junction at Yamato-Saidaiji Station several hours after the assassination of Shinzo Abe; 2022 Sri Lankan protests, Anti-government protest in Sri Lanka in front of the Presidential Secretari ...

Valmiera Valmiera (; german: link=no, Wolmar; pl, Wolmar see other names) is the largest city of the historical Vidzeme region, Latvia, with a total area of . As of 2002, Valmiera had a population of 27,323, and in 2020 – 24 879. It is a state city ...

Notable managers and players

File:Aleksandrs_Starkovs.jpg,

Aleksandrs Starkovs Aleksandrs Starkovs (born 26 July 1955) is a Latvian football coach and a former player. Most recently he coached FK Liepāja. Starkovs has managed clubs such as Spartak Moscow in Russia, FK Baku in Azerbaijan and Skonto FC in Latvia. He had t ...

has won 12 league titles since independence with Skonto as a manager. File:Roman_Hryhorchuk_11.08.2013.1.jpg, Three times winner with

Ventspils Ventspils (; german: Windau, ; see other names) is a state city in northwestern Latvia in the historical Courland region of Latvia, and is the sixth largest city in the country. At the beginning of 2020, Ventspils had a population of 33,906. It ...

Ukrainian

Roman Hryhorchuk Roman Yosypovych Hryhorchuk ( uk, Роман Йосипович Григорчук; born 22 March 1965) is a Ukrainian football manager who is the head coach of Chornomorets Odesa and a former player. Playing career He started playing with Lys ...

is the first manager who reached

Europa League The UEFA Europa League (abbreviated as UEL, or sometimes, UEFA EL), formerly the UEFA Cup, is an annual football club competition organised since 1971 by the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) for eligible European football clubs. It ...

group stage in Virslīga history. File:Māris_Verpakovskis.jpg, First-ever Latvian who scored in

Euros The euro (symbol: €; code: EUR) is the official currency of 19 out of the member states of the European Union (EU). This group of states is known as the eurozone or, officially, the euro area, and includes about 340 million citizens . T ...

Māris Verpakovskis Māris Verpakovskis (born 15 October 1979), is a Latvian retired professional footballer who played as a striker. He represented the Latvia national team at UEFA Euro 2004 and is the only Latvian player to score at the end stage of a major int ...

has won league titles with both Skonto and

Liepāja Liepāja (; liv, Līepõ; see #Names and toponymy, other names) is a state city in western Latvia, located on the Baltic Sea. It is the largest-city in the Kurzeme Planning Region, Kurzeme Region and the third-largest city in the country after R ...

. File:Marians_Pahars.jpg, Ukrainian born

Marians Pahars Marians Pahars (born 5 August 1976) is a Latvian professional football manager and a former player. As a player, he spent the majority of his career operating as a striker for English club Southampton, where he played in the Premier League an ...

has won 5 league titles before moving to

Southampton Southampton () is a port city in the ceremonial county of Hampshire in southern England. It is located approximately south-west of London and west of Portsmouth. The city forms part of the South Hampshire built-up area, which also covers Po ...

. File:Viktor_Skripnik.jpg,

Bundesliga The Bundesliga (; ), sometimes referred to as the Fußball-Bundesliga () or 1. Bundesliga (), is a professional association football league in Germany. At the top of the German football league system, the Bundesliga is Germany's primary footba ...

winner Ukrainian

Viktor Skrypnyk Viktor Anatoliyovych Skrypnyk ( uk, Віктор Анатолійович Скрипник; born 19 November 1969) is a Ukrainian former professional footballer and current manager of Vorskla Poltava. As a player, he helped Werder Bremen to the ...

has won league title with

Riga Riga (; lv, Rīga , liv, Rīgõ) is the capital and largest city of Latvia and is home to 605,802 inhabitants which is a third of Latvia's population. The city lies on the Gulf of Riga at the mouth of the Daugava river where it meets the Ba ...

as a manager. File:Aleksandrs Koliņko.jpg,

Aleksandrs Koliņko Aleksandrs Koliņko (born 18 June 1975) is a Latvian retired professional footballer who works as assistant manager and goalkeeping coach of Latvian Higher League club FK RFS. Club career Koliņko was born in Riga and started his career in 199 ...

, best known for playing for

Crystal Palace Crystal Palace may refer to: Places Canada * Crystal Palace Complex (Dieppe), a former amusement park now a shopping complex in Dieppe, New Brunswick * Crystal Palace Barracks, London, Ontario * Crystal Palace (Montreal), an exhibition building ...

has won 6 league titles totally with Skonto as a player and Spartaks as an assistant manager.

Most titles

This is a list of clubs, in order of most titles won in championships in independent Latvia (1922–1940 and 1991 to date). Teams in bold are part of 2020 Virslīga. Virsliga 2008 Ventspils

By club

Rivalries

The most well-known rivalry is the Kurzeme Derby (Kurzemes derbijs) between

and

. The two biggest clubs in Kurzeme have played 86 matches between themselves with a record of 31–28–27 (including Metalurgs) in favor of Liepāja prior to the 2019 Virslīga. Since 2016, the Riga Derby (Rīgas derbijs) was started between

and Rīgas FS as two clubs were promoted at the same time. A 2019 match in

Skonto Stadium Skonto Stadium ( lv, Skonto stadions) is a football stadium in Riga, Latvia. The stadium was built in 2000 and currently has 8,087 seats in total (open for spectators & VIP guests on matchdays). It is the 2nd-largest stadium in Latvia, behind Dau ...

between the two sides broke a ten-year attendance record.

Virslīga clubs in international competitions

UEFA competitions UEFA competitions (french: competitions de l'UEFA), referred improperly by the mass media as European football, are the set of tournaments organised by the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA), generally in professional and amateur asso ...

was the Latvian first club who qualified for the group stage of a

club competition, reaching the 2009–10 UEFA Europa League group stage. Europa League group stage Skonto reached the

UEFA Champions League The UEFA Champions League (abbreviated as UCL, or sometimes, UEFA CL) is an annual club football competition organised by the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) and contested by top-division European clubs, deciding the competit ...

last qualifying stage for a number of times in the late 1990s and early 2000s, but lost to such teams like

FC Barcelona Futbol Club Barcelona (), commonly referred to as Barcelona and colloquially known as Barça (), is a professional football club based in Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain, that competes in La Liga, the top flight of Spanish football. Founded ...

1997 File:1997 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The movie set of ''Titanic'', the highest-grossing movie in history at the time; ''Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone'', is published; Comet Hale-Bopp passes by Earth and becomes one of t ...

, Internazionale FC in 1998 and

Chelsea FC Chelsea Football Club is an English professional football club based in Fulham, West London. Founded in 1905, they play their home games at Stamford Bridge. The club competes in the Premier League, the top division of English football. Th ...

in 1999. Most recently, RFS qualified for the 2022-23 UEFA Europa Conference League group stage, finishing in fourth place with 2 points.

Commonwealth of Independent States Cup The Commonwealth of Independent States Cup (russian: Кубок чемпионов Содружества, Кубок Содружества, Кубок чемпионов содружества стран СНГ и Балтии) is a defunct ann ...

* Skonto **''Runners-up'' (3):

2001 The September 11 attacks against the United States by Al-Qaeda, which Casualties of the September 11 attacks, killed 2,977 people and instigated the global war on terror, were a defining event of 2001. The United States led a Participants in ...

2003 File:2003 Events Collage.png, From top left, clockwise: The crew of STS-107 perished when the Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrated during reentry into Earth's atmosphere; SARS became an epidemic in China, and was a precursor to SARS-CoV-2; A des ...

2004 2004 was designated as an International Year of Rice by the United Nations, and the International Year to Commemorate the Struggle Against Slavery and its Abolition (by UNESCO). Events January * January 3 – Flash Airlines Flight 6 ...

. *

**''Runners-up'' (1):

2007 File:2007 Events Collage.png, From top left, clockwise: Steve Jobs unveils Apple's first iPhone; TAM Airlines Flight 3054 overruns a runway and crashes into a gas station, killing almost 200 people; Former Pakistani Prime Minister of Pakistan, Pr ...

Baltic League The Baltic League (officially known as the Triobet Baltic League) was a Baltic men's football club tournament held four times between the top club sides from Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Launched in 2007 inspired by the now defunct Scandinav ...

* Metalurgs **Champions (1): 2007. *

**Champions (1): 2010. **''Runners-up'' (2): 2007, 2011. * Skonto **Champions (1): 2011. **''Runners-up'' (1): 2008.

References

External links

Association Virsliga at futbolavirsliga.tv

Virsliga fixtures, including kick off times, at worldfootball.net
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Summer association football leagues it:Campionato lettone di calcio