Cerezo Osaka traces its roots to 1957, when Yanmar Diesel founded a company football team in the Osaka–Amagasaki area. The club was among the original eight founding members of the Japan Soccer League in 1965, and Yanmar Diesel won four JSL titles during the 1960s and 1970s, establishing itself as one of the country's leading sides of that era.
With the birth of the professional J.League, the club restructured and rebranded as Cerezo Osaka in 1994, taking its name from the Spanish word for cherry blossom — the civic flower of Osaka. The club's distinctive pink kit reflects that identity. After winning the Japan Football League title in 1994, Cerezo joined the J1 League in 1995. The early professional era brought promise but not silverware: the club finished as runner-up in the 2000 and 2005 J1 League seasons without clinching the title, earning a reputation for near misses.
The most significant chapter in the club's modern history came in 2017, when Cerezo won both the J.League Cup and the Emperor's Cup in the same season — its first major domestic trophies under the Cerezo name. The Japanese Super Cup followed in February 2018. Across the years, Cerezo has been equally noted for the players it has developed: Shinji Kagawa emerged from the academy to become a global name, and Takumi Minamino is among several graduates who reached the highest levels of the game.
Cerezo's fiercest rivalry is with Gamba Osaka — the Osaka derby — a fixture that defines the club's identity within Japanese football. Since 2017, the club has remained a stable J1 presence, continuing to balance youth development with competitive ambition.