SC Braga were founded on 19 January 1921 in the city of Braga, in the Minho region of north-western Portugal. The club began life wearing green and white colours inspired by Lisbon's Sporting CP, but by the mid-1940s had switched to a red-and-white strip modelled on English club Arsenal — a change attributed either to a president with London business ties or to a Hungarian coach's admiration for the Arsenal style. That distinctive kit gave rise to the nickname Os Arsenalistas, and the connection to Arsenal remains a point of pride in club identity today.
Braga spent much of the twentieth century as a solid mid-table Primeira Liga side, occasionally competing in UEFA competitions from the 1960s onward. The modern era began under Jesualdo Ferreira in the early 2000s, when the club established itself as a consistent European qualifier. The defining moment came in 2010–11: Braga qualified for the UEFA Champions League for the first time, then dropped into the Europa League and reached the final in Dublin, where they lost narrowly to FC Porto. Along the way they became one of just a handful of Portuguese clubs to reach a European final. Domestically, three Taça de Portugal titles (1965–66, 2015–16, 2020–21) and three Taça da Liga titles (2012–13, 2019–20, 2023–24) confirm their status as Portugal's fifth most decorated club. In 2008 they also won the UEFA Intertoto Cup, the only Portuguese club to do so.
In the current decade Braga have remained in the upper reaches of the Primeira Liga, returned to the Champions League in 2022–23, and attracted investment from Qatar Sports Investments. Their fiercest rivalry is the Derby do Minho against near-neighbours Vitória SC of Guimarães, a contest rooted in centuries of regional competition between two historic cities.