Beerschot VA traces its roots to 1921, when Football Club Wilrijk was founded in the Wilrijk district of Antwerp, Belgium. After decades of modest progress through the Belgian amateur pyramid, the club merged with local side Olympia Wilrijk 72 in 1993 to form KFC Olympia Wilrijk, steadily climbing back toward national competition.
The club's modern identity was born from the ashes of a historic name. When the professional club Beerschot AC was declared bankrupt in May 2013 and folded, KFCO Wilrijk stepped in to absorb its legacy — adopting the Beerschot name, the purple and white colours, and relocating to the iconic Olympic Stadium ('t Kiel) in Antwerp. The move was met with extraordinary public enthusiasm: their very first provincial-division match as FCO Beerschot Wilrijk drew 8,500 fans, a record for Belgian provincial football at the time, and subsequent games pushed that figure to nearly 12,000. This passionate fanbase defined the club's DNA from day one.
The reborn club climbed the Belgian football pyramid with remarkable speed, winning promotion from the provincial division through the fourth and third tiers, and claiming the inaugural Amateur First Division title in 2016–17 to reach the second-tier Proximus League. After three consecutive promotion-final appearances, Beerschot finally won promotion to the Belgian First Division A at the end of the 2019–20 season, marking their return to top-flight football. Relegation followed in 2021–22, but the club bounced back by winning the Challenger Pro League in 2023–24, only to be relegated again after the 2024–25 season.
Beerschot's identity is inseparable from Antwerp itself and from the memory of the old Beerschot lineage — a club that carries association number 13 within the Belgian FA, linking it to one of the country's oldest football traditions.