🇯🇵 Japan · Kashima (Ibaraki Prefecture)
Kashima Antlers
鹿島アントラーズ
Kashima Antlers is a club from Kashima, in Ibaraki Prefecture, founded in 1947 as the team of the steelmaker Sumitomo Metal and a founding member of the J.League in 1993.
See its shirts ↓Crests
The club
- Name
- Kashima Antlers
- Full name
- 鹿島アントラーズ
- City
- Kashima (Ibaraki Prefecture)
- Country
- Japan
- Official website
- antlers.co.jp
- Colors
- #A6192E
- Competitions
- J2 League (1974–1984)
- J.League Cup (since 1976)
- Emperor's Cup (since 1977)
- J1 League (1985)
- J2 League (1986)
- J1 League (1987–1988)
- J2 League (1989–1991)
- J1 League (since 1993)
- Japanese Super Cup (1997–2017)
- AFC Champions League (since 1997)
- AFC Cup Winners' Cup (1998)
- Suruga Bank Championship (2012–2016)
- FIFA Club World Cup (2016–2018)
- In the archive
- 1 crest · 1 shirt
Current crest
Since 2026
Shirts
Club history
Kashima Antlers is a club from Kashima, in Ibaraki Prefecture, founded in 1947 as the team of the steelmaker Sumitomo Metal and a founding member of the J.League in 1993. It is the most successful club in Japan, with a record nine league titles, five Emperor's Cups and six League Cups, and it has never been relegated in the professional era. In 2016 it became the first Asian club to play in the Club World Cup final, and in 2018 it won the AFC Champions League.
The full story is for premium members
## From Sumitomo to Kashima The club was born in 1947 in Osaka as the football team of the steelmaker Sumitomo Metal Industries. In 1975 it moved to Kashima, a small industrial town in Ibaraki Prefecture where the company had a large plant. From 1974 it played in the second division of the Japan Soccer League (JSL), was promoted to the top flight in 1985 and was relegated twice, in 1986 and in 1989, in an era of modest results.
The fans
Its supporters dress in the club's red, «Antlers Red», and in the 2025 league season the club drew an average of around 27,400 people per match to the stadium in Kashima. Its great national rivalry is with Júbilo Iwata, with whom it shared the dominance of Japanese football in the late 1990s: the fixture is known as the National Derby. Against Mito HollyHock, the other club in the prefecture, it plays the Ibaraki Derby.
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