Professional Chovgan League

Overview

The Professional Chovgan League is Azerbaijan’s professional club competition in chovgan, the traditional horse-riding game regarded as the predecessor of modern polo. It is organized by the Equestrian Federation of the Republic of Azerbaijan (ARAF), began on 21 May 2024 with an opening ceremony at the Bina Equestrian Center, and featured ten teams in its first season, with Sarhadchi emerging as the inaugural champion (Idman.biz; Idman.biz).

The league sits at the top of the domestic chovgan structure. Its winner meets the winner of the President’s Cup in the Chovqan Super Cup: in January 2025, Sarhadchi entered that match as league champion and beat Elit, the President’s Cup winner, 1–0 (Idman.biz). The league expanded to twelve teams for its second season in 2025 and was still being played in October 2026, when Polad beat Sarhadchi 3–1 in a leading fixture (Idman.biz; Idman.biz). Chovgan itself is a heritage sport: UNESCO inscribed the Azerbaijani game on its List of Intangible Cultural Heritage in Need of Urgent Safeguarding in 2013 (National Commission of the Republic of Azerbaijan for UNESCO).

Inauguration and first season (2024)

The league was launched as a first for Azerbaijani equestrian sport. In the days before the opening, Idman.biz reported that the Equestrian Federation of the Republic of Azerbaijan was organizing the Professional Chovgan League for the first time, with ten professional teams competing on national horses and an opening ceremony set for 21 May at 14:00 at the Bina Equestrian Center (Idman.biz). The inauguration itself drew the country’s sports leadership: Minister of Youth and Sports Farid Gayibov, federation president Elchin Guliyev, vice-president Bahruz Nabiyev, federation officials and sports representatives all attended (Idman.biz).

Guliyev framed the league as a vehicle for developing equestrian sport and promoting Azerbaijan’s pedigree horses internationally, noting that the poet Nizami Ganjavi had described chovgan in his poem Khosrov and Shirin in the twelfth century (Idman.biz). Gayibov congratulated those present on what he called a great equestrian holiday and noted that the International Chovgan Federation had recently been established (Idman.biz). After the speeches, the national anthem was played and a parade of the league’s teams began (Idman.biz). The first season was scheduled to end on 3–4 December 2024, and Sarhadchi finished it as champion (Idman.biz; Idman.biz).

Format and scoring

The first season’s ten teams were Aghstafa Dilbaz, Elit, Embawood, Kohlen, Qarabag, Omar, Polad, Sarhadchi, Shirvan and Zafar, announced by federation vice-president Bahruz Nabiyev at a pre-season press conference (Idman.biz). All matches in that first season were played at the Bina Equestrian Center, though Nabiyev said work was already under way for teams to have their own fields from the following year, with games then held at those grounds (Idman.biz). The scoring system awarded three points for a win and one point for a draw (Idman.biz).

The format grew with the league. For the 2025 season the field expanded to twelve teams, with a March-to-December calendar, twenty-two rounds played over two cycles, and 132 games in total — the arithmetic of a double round-robin in which each team meets every other team twice (Idman.biz). The 2025 opening round added a newly joined team, Khazar, to a field that also included Buta Golden, Atilla, Shamakhi and the returning clubs (Idman.biz; AzerNews). Discipline is enforced through technical defeats: a team that fails to appear for a match is handed a 0–6 loss, as happened to Atilla in 2026 and, in reverse, to opponents of the expelled Buta Golden later that year (AzerNews; Idman.biz).

Later seasons: 2025 and 2026

The second season kicked off at the Bina Equestrian Center in March 2025, with federation president Elchin Guliyev, Minister of Youth and Sports Farid Gayibov and Minister of Agriculture Majnun Mammadov attending the opening ceremony (Idman.biz). The opening round produced emphatic results: Sarhadchi beat Buta Golden 3–0, Polad and Elit drew 0–0, Omar beat the newly joined Khazar 5–1, Shirvan beat Atilla 8–1, Embawood beat Qarabag 7–0, and Zafar beat Agstafa Dilbaz 10–0 (Idman.biz). The season was scheduled to conclude on 26 November 2025, but no source read in full confirms who won it, so this profile does not name a 2025 champion (Idman.biz).

The league was still running in 2026. In the third round that April, Sarhadchi beat Embawood 2–1, Buta Golden beat Shamakhi 5–0, Zafar beat Khazar 7–0 and Polad beat Omar 3–0, leaving Polad, Sarhadchi and Elit level on nine points each (AzerNews). By October 2026, Polad had beaten Sarhadchi 3–1 in a headline fixture, Elit had beaten Embawood 1–0, and Buta Golden had been expelled from the championship, handing Atilla a 6–0 technical win (Idman.biz). In the scoring race that month, Sarhadchi’s Vahid Mammadov led with 24 goals, ahead of Polad’s Samir Pirimov on 19 (Idman.biz).

The game behind the league

Chovgan is a team game played on horseback and is described by Azerbaijan’s National Commission for UNESCO as the predecessor of modern polo, with the word itself of Turkic origin meaning “to strike, waving a stick” (National Commission of the Republic of Azerbaijan for UNESCO). Each team fields five riders — two fullbacks and three forwards — who use wooden mallets to drive a small leather or wooden ball into the opposing team’s goal, with a match lasting thirty minutes and no age restrictions (AzerNews). Players traditionally wear large astrakhan hats, long tight-fitting coats with a high waist, and special trousers, socks and shoes (AzerNews).

The game is closely tied to the Karabakh horse, the breed native to Azerbaijan on which league matches are played, and its heritage runs deep: a vessel depicting the game found near Beylagan confirms its presence there in the eleventh century, and it appears in Nizami’s Khosrov and Shirin and in the epic Kitabi Dede Gorgud (National Commission of the Republic of Azerbaijan for UNESCO). After fading during the Soviet period and the disruption that followed, the game was revived in the 2000s, with teams from eight regions contesting a President’s Cup in 2006 (National Commission of the Republic of Azerbaijan for UNESCO). On 3 December 2013, UNESCO inscribed chovqan on its List of Intangible Cultural Heritage in Need of Urgent Safeguarding (National Commission of the Republic of Azerbaijan for UNESCO).

The league’s place in Azerbaijani chovgan

The Professional Chovgan League is the domestic club competition, distinct from the older cup tournaments that surround it. The President’s Cup, held annually since the 2006 revival, is a separate knockout-style event: Elit won the edition that preceded the January 2025 Super Cup and thereby qualified for it against the league champion (Idman.biz). The Super Cup itself is a one-off champion-versus-champion match, which Sarhadchi won 1–0 in January 2025 in what federation secretary-general Bahruz Nabiyev called a more challenging game than ordinary league fixtures because both sides were champions of different competitions (Idman.biz).

Internationally, the picture is different: Nabiyev said that only the Azerbaijani national team, not league clubs, currently plays in international tournaments (Idman.biz). The International Chovgan Federation (ICF), whose president is Bahruz Nabiyev (elected at its February 2024 founding assembly), organizes world championships in even-numbered years and continental championships in odd-numbered years, with the 2026 World Championship assigned to Baku (Idman.biz). No source read in full describes a formal organizational link between the league and the ICF, and this profile does not assert one. The league’s stated purpose is domestic: to professionalize the sport, give clubs regular fixtures, and promote chovgan among young people in Azerbaijan (Idman.biz).

Season	Teams	Format	Champion
2024 (first)	10	Single venue (Bina Equestrian Center); 3 points for a win, 1 for a draw	Sarhadchi
2025	12	22 rounds over two cycles; 132 games; March–December	Not verified — not asserted
2026	Not verified	Season under way in October 2026; technical defeats for no-shows and expulsion	Season in progress at last report

Sources: Idman.biz; Idman.biz; Idman.biz; Idman.biz.

Frequently asked questions

What is the Professional Chovgan League? It is Azerbaijan’s professional club competition in chovgan, the traditional horse-riding game regarded as the predecessor of modern polo. Organized by the Equestrian Federation of the Republic of Azerbaijan, it began in 2024 with ten teams and expanded to twelve teams in 2025.

When did the Professional Chovgan League start? The league was inaugurated on 21 May 2024 at the Bina Equestrian Center near Baku, with an opening ceremony attended by the sports minister and federation leaders, a parade of the ten participating teams, and the first season scheduled to end on 3–4 December.

Who won the first Professional Chovgan League? Sarhadchi won the inaugural 2024 season. As league champion, Sarhadchi then beat Elit, the President’s Cup winner, 1–0 in the Chovqan Super Cup in January 2025. The 2025 season champion has not been verified from a source read in full.

How does the league work? Teams play a round-robin schedule with three points for a win and one for a draw. The 2025 season used 22 rounds over two cycles, totalling 132 games. Matches are played on Karabakh horses, with five riders per side and thirty-minute games, and no-shows are punished with a 0–6 technical defeat.

Is the league connected to the International Chovgan Federation? No direct organizational link has been verified. The league is a domestic competition run by Azerbaijan’s national federation, while the International Chovgan Federation runs world and continental championships for national teams, and only the Azerbaijani national team currently plays internationally.

What this profile does not claim

• It does not name a 2025 season champion: no source read in full confirms who won the 2025 season.
• It does not state the total number of teams in the 2026 season: only the teams named in round reports are mentioned.
• It does not assert any formal relationship between the Professional Chovgan League and the International Chovgan Federation; the two are described as separate bodies with separate competitions.
• It does not give final standings, full fixture lists, or attendance figures for any season, none of which were verified from sources read in full.
• It does not treat the President’s Cup or the Chovqan Super Cup as part of the league; they are separate competitions that intersect with it only through the Super Cup pairing.
• It does not claim the league’s matches moved to club home fields as planned for 2025; the sources confirm the intention, not the outcome.