One of French football’s most decorated clubs just got kicked out of every national competition in the country. FC Girondins de Bordeaux, six-time Ligue 1 champions, has been excluded from the National Championships by France’s financial watchdog after failing to produce €9 million in required guarantees. The club now faces potential liquidation and a drop to Régional 1, the sixth tier of French football, for the 2026-27 season.
How a historic club ended up here
The DNCG, France’s financial control body for football clubs, confirmed the exclusion in early July 2026. Bordeaux has lodged an appeal, but the math is brutal. The club couldn’t scrape together the €9 million needed to satisfy financial requirements.
This didn’t happen overnight. Bordeaux filed for bankruptcy back in July 2024 and subsequently renounced its professional status, which saw the club dropped to National 2. That alone was a gut punch for supporters of a team that last lifted the Ligue 1 trophy in 2009. Now the situation has gotten measurably worse.
The chain of failures traces back to the COVID-19 pandemic, which hollowed out the club’s finances and prompted American investment firm King Street Capital to pull its funding. The ownership vacuum that followed set the stage for what came next.
