Cercle Brugge were founded on 9 April 1899 in Bruges, Belgium, by former students of the Saint Francis Xavier Institute. Originally a multi-sport organisation covering football, cricket, tennis, running and cycling, the club joined the Royal Belgian Football Association in 1900 and were assigned matricule number 12 — a badge of honour that reflects their status as one of Belgium's oldest clubs.
The early decades brought genuine silverware. Cercle claimed their first national championship in the 1910–11 season, edging fierce city rivals Club Brugge by a single point on the final matchday. Two more league titles followed — in 1926–27 and 1929–30 — making them one of the dominant forces in Belgian football between the wars. The 1926–27 campaign was especially fruitful: Cercle also lifted the Belgian Cup that year, completing a domestic double. A second Cup triumph came in 1984–85, ending a long wait for major honours.
The club's story is punctuated by cycles of relegation and revival. They dropped out of the top flight several times across the twentieth century, each time working their way back. A notable chapter was the late 1960s "five-year plan" under coach Urbain Braems, which successfully returned Cercle to the Pro League by 1971 and helped establish a period of relative stability that lasted into the mid-1990s.
No account of Cercle Brugge is complete without the rivalry with Club Brugge. The two clubs share the 29,042-seat Jan Breydel Stadium, making their clashes — known as the Bruges derby — uniquely intense. Cercle enter the current decade as a top-flight side competing in the Belgian Pro League, carrying a proud history as one of the country's founding football clubs.