Nagoya Grampus trace their roots to 1939, when Toyota Motor Corporation established a company football team in Nagoya, Aichi Prefecture. After decades of competing in regional and corporate leagues, the club was restructured ahead of the professional era and became one of the ten founding members of the J.League in 1993, adopting the name Nagoya Grampus Eight — a name drawn from two symbols of the city: the golden shachihoko (mythical carp) atop Nagoya Castle, whose Japanese name shares a homophone with the orca (once called a grampus), and the maru-hachi circle-eight emblem of Nagoya itself.
The club's earliest defining era came under Arsène Wenger, who took charge in 1995. He transformed a struggling side into genuine title contenders: Nagoya won the Emperor's Cup that year, defeating Sanfrecce Hiroshima 3–0 in the final, and finished as J.League runners-up, with Yugoslav playmaker Dragan Stojković named league MVP. Wenger departed in 1996, but the club secured a second Emperor's Cup in 1999.
The next landmark era arrived when Stojković returned — this time as manager. From 2008 he rebuilt Nagoya into an attacking, organised side, and on 20 November 2010 the club claimed its first J1 League title. Success continued into 2011 with the Japanese Super Cup. After Stojković's departure and a difficult mid-decade that included a first-ever relegation to J2 in 2016, Nagoya bounced back at the first attempt in 2017. Under Massimo Ficcadenti, the club ended an eleven-year trophy drought by winning the 2021 J.League Cup, and won the competition again in 2024 under Kenta Hasegawa. Rooted in the Toyota heartland and defined by the red-and-black of Nagoya, the club remains one of Japan's most recognisable football institutions.