Underdog Stories / Football history

Why Does FC Vaduz Play in the Swiss League?

Why does FC Vaduz play in the Swiss league? Liechtenstein has no league of its own, so the club climbs Switzerland's ladder and wins a cup to reach Europe.

By Brett Hanson · Underdog Podcasts · July 6, 2026

Share on X

The final was supposed to be a formality. On Tuesday, 5 May 2026, FC Vaduz hosted USV Eschen/Mauren, a side from the Swiss 1. Liga, and it took seven goals to settle it. Vaduz won 4-3, and the 79th cup final was not the clear-cut affair that was expected. It was their 52nd Liechtenstein Cup.

So why does FC Vaduz play in the Swiss league? Because Liechtenstein has no league of its own. Its seven clubs play in Switzerland's pyramid, Vaduz has been in it since 1933, and the only way the club reaches European football is by winning the home country's cup.

Chris Horwedel, who hosts the podcast Why We Love This Club, says in his FC Vaduz episode that this sounds like "something created during a very complicated meeting." He has a point. It's also the most sensible arrangement available.

Why does FC Vaduz play in the Swiss league instead of Liechtenstein's?

Because there isn't a Liechtenstein league to play in. The country covers about 62 square miles and has roughly 40,000 people. It is the only UEFA member nation without a domestic top flight. Seven clubs can't fill a proper pyramid, and one professional club among them would win it every year.

Vaduz was founded on 14 February 1932. Valentine's Day, as Chris points out. Johann Walser was the first chairman, and in April the team won its first recorded match 2-1 against a side from Basel.

The club didn't go straight to Switzerland. It spent the 1932-33 season in the Vorarlberg association in Austria, then began playing in Switzerland in 1933. Liechtenstein tried a home-grown option for a while. Between 1934 and 1937 the clubs played a Liechtenstein-only tournament under the St. Gallen regional association, and FC Triesen won it in 1934, 1935 and 1937. It was never revived after the war.

The clubs from the principality are "guest clubs" with a special status, not fully Swiss. Wikipedia's club page says Vaduz pays the Swiss association around £150,000 a year to take part as a foreign club. I couldn't find a primary source for that figure, so treat it as a rough guide.

How does a Swiss-league club qualify for Europe?

Through the cup. Vaduz can't take one of Switzerland's UEFA places, because it represents the Liechtenstein Football Association. The episode puts it plainly: if they want European football, they have to win the national cup.

The oddest consequence got spelled out in an AFP report from 2022. If Vaduz ever topped the Swiss Super League, they would not be crowned champions or be eligible for the Champions League. The club would finish first in a competition it isn't allowed to win.

The cup is the only door. UEFA gave Liechtenstein one team in the Conference League because the country runs a domestic cup and no domestic league. The winner enters at the second qualifying round.

How many Liechtenstein Cups has FC Vaduz won?

Fifty-two, in 65 finals. The next best club, FC Balzers, has won it 11 times. Vaduz took its first in 1949 and then, in Chris's phrasing, won "an unreasonable number after that." He calls it "an annual appointment with destiny."

Be honest about what that number means. The cup draws first teams and reserve sides from all seven clubs, and Vaduz usually shows up as the only professional outfit against part-timers. Winning it 52 times is less a feat than a habit. The real achievements sit elsewhere in this story.

Still, the 2026 final shows the cup isn't entirely a ceremony. It was Vaduz's 30th final in a row. It was also the 18th final between Vaduz and Eschen/Mauren, and the smaller club had only ever beaten Vaduz three times. Make that three and a near miss.

What happened the first time Vaduz played in Europe?

“The Swiss League gives them a ladder, the Liechtenstein Cup gives them a flag.”
— Chris Horwedel, on Why We Love This Club

It went badly. Vaduz entered continental competition in 1992 and lost 12-1 on aggregate to Chornomorets Odesa in the Cup Winners' Cup. Four years later they got past Universitate Riga on penalties, their first European round won. The prize was Paris Saint-Germain, who beat them 7-0 over two legs.

For years that was the pattern, as the episode tells it. Win the cup, enter Europe early, meet a richer club and go home before most fans noticed qualifying had started.

There were still odd nights. In 2019 Vaduz drew Eintracht Frankfurt in the Europa League. The first match in Vaduz drew 5,908 spectators, in a town with a population of 5,521. The visitors won both legs, but a stadium holding more people than the town is a decent night out on its own.

How did Vaduz reach a European group stage in 2022?

From the second tier, and without anyone expecting it. In the summer of 2022 Vaduz were in the Swiss Challenge League. They beat Slovenia's Koper 2-1 on aggregate and then met Konyaspor. The second leg in Turkey finished Konyaspor 2, Vaduz 4. That was a side that had finished third in the Turkish league the season before.

The playoff round brought Rapid Vienna. Vaduz drew 1-1 at home, then went to Austria. Tunahan Çiçek scored the only goal in a 1-0 win. Vaduz became the first club from Liechtenstein to play in a UEFA group stage.

The group was hard: AZ Alkmaar, Apollon Limassol and Dnipro-1. Vaduz finished last with two points, both from draws. The episode doesn't pretend otherwise: they won no group match, "and it did not really matter." Club president Patrick Burgmeier told AFP the team had nothing to lose and believed in that miracle.

Where does FC Vaduz play, and what is it like?

The Rheinparkstadion opened in 1998 on the eastern bank of the Rhine, almost against the Swiss border. Vaduz Castle sits above the town and mountains rise around the valley. It's also the national team's home. Capacity is about 7,500 when the surrounding areas are used, which is more than the population of Vaduz.

The opening match was against Kaiserslautern, then reigning Bundesliga champions. They won 8-0. Chris calls it "not the ideal housewarming result," though it showed the scoreboard worked.

Around the ground there's no entertainment district. There's a stadium, a river, a border and a castle. In a good season there's also a Swiss club visiting for a league game, a short walk from where the country ends.

Is FC Vaduz in the Swiss Super League now?

Yes, for 2026-27. It's the club's return to the top flight after being relegated in 2021. The first promotion came in 2008. That win gave Liechtenstein a representative at the top level of Swiss football for the first time, though Vaduz went back down after one season.

The latest promotion was the club's best season in the Swiss second tier. Under manager Marc Schneider, Vaduz won the 2025-26 Challenge League with a club-record 81 points from 36 matches: 25 wins, 6 draws, 5 defeats. They finished one point ahead of Aarau after beating FC Wil 3-1 on the last day. Nineteen different players scored. And 33 of the 75 league goals, about 44%, came from set pieces.

The squad isn't built from Liechtenstein alone. Nicolas Hasler and sporting director Franz Burgmeier (a club-record 371 appearances) are home-grown names. Most of the rest come from Switzerland, Germany, Austria and elsewhere. The Swiss league is both the competition and the shop window.

The first week of 2026-27 shows how the arrangement works. On 23 July Vaduz won a Conference League qualifier 4-0 against Athletic Club d'Escaldes of Andorra. Three days later they opened the Super League season at Lugano. They lost 2-1, but 20-year-old Lütfi Delipi scored the club's first top-flight goal since its return.

Then goalkeeper Leon Schäfrin was sent off in the 82nd minute, after Vaduz had used all their substitutions. Defender Liridon Barisic went in goal. He did not concede.