Futbol Club Barcelona is a professional association football club based in Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain. The club was founded in 1899 by a group of Swiss, Catalan, German, and English footballers led by Joan Gamper, and played its first friendly match on 8 December 1899. Initially, Barcelona played against other local clubs in various Catalan tournaments, but in 1929 the club became one of the founding members of La Liga, Spain's first national league. As of 2024, Barcelona is one of only three clubs to have never been relegated from the top level of Spanish football, the others being Athletic Bilbao and Real Madrid.[1]
In the period from 1919 to 1929, Barça won the Copa del Rey five times and the Campionat de Catalunya nine times.[2] Barcelona enjoyed a successful start in La Liga, winning the championship in the competition's first season. However, they did not win the league again until 1945. Three seasons prior to that, Barcelona finished twelfth, which remains, as of 2024, the club's lowest league finish.[3] Barcelona won five trophies in the 1951–52 season, becoming known as "Barça of the Five Cups" (Catalan: el Barça de les Cinc Copes), and went on to win La Liga three times, the Copa del Rey five times and the Inter-Cities Fairs Cup once during the 1950s.[2] The club then entered a lean spell, with only two league titles between 1960 and 1990. In 1988, former legendary player Johan Cruyff was appointed manager and assembled what would later be known as the "Dream Team".[4] In 1991, he led the club to its first league title in six years and repeated the feat the following season when Barça also won the European Cup for the first time. In the 1993–94 season, Barcelona won their fourth consecutive league title, edging out Deportivo de La Coruña on goal difference after the two clubs finished level on points.[5][6]
Newly elected president Joan Laporta's appointment of Frank Rijkaard as coach and the signing of Ronaldinho in 2003 marked the beginning of another spell of sustained success.[7][8][9] In 2005, Barcelona once again won La Liga championship, and retained it the following season. In May 2006, Barcelona defeated Arsenal in the Champions League final, coming back from 0–1 to win 2–1 in the last fifteen minutes.[10] Three years later, the club beat Manchester United 2–0 in the 2009 Champions League final, having already won La Liga and the Copa del Rey that season, to become the first Spanish side to complete the treble.[11] In December 2009, Barcelona won the Club World Cup, having also won the Spanish and European Super Cups, thereby completing an unprecedented sextuple.[12]
The club has won La Liga championship 27 times, the Copa del Rey 31 times, the Copa de la Liga twice, the Supercopa de España fourteen times, the Copa Eva Duarte three times, the Champions League five times, the Cup Winners' Cup four times, the Fairs Cup three times, the Super Cup five times and the Club World Cup three times.[13] The table details the club's achievements in the early regional championships and in all national and international first-team competitions for each completed season since the club's formation in 1899.