Rot-Weiss Essen: Who are the team competing for a place in Bundesliga 2 in 2026/27?
Rot-Weiss Essen have their sights set on returning to Bundesliga 2 for the first time since 2007 after finishing third in the 3. Liga and setting up a promotion/relegation play-off with Greuther Fürth. We look back on the Ruhr district side’s campaign…
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The story of 2025/26
On the whole, Essen have been much more difficult to beat in their first full season under head coach Uwe Koschinat. Seven wins and only two defeats from their first 14 games left them in fourth place in early November - but only three points behind then-leaders Duisburg.
Defeat to promotion rivals Energie Cottbus on Matchday 15 could have sucked the wind from their sails, but the 3-2 reverse ended up having the opposite effect as Koschinat’s charges embarked on a nine-match unbeaten run to cement their place among the leading pack.
Back-to-back losses to eventual champions Osnabrück and Hansa Rostock in late February also appeared to galvanise Essen, who won their next seven games - including a crucial 1-0 victory over Duisburg - to move into the automatic promotion places for the first time in 2025/26.
Their Bundesliga 2 spot within touching distance, Essen then suffered three straight defeats against Cottbus, Saarbrücken and VfB Stuttgart II to leave them two points adrift of the promotion play-off spot with two games remaining - but Koschinat’s charges were not done yet.
A 1-0 win over Verl on the penultimate weekend of the campaign kept their hopes alive, before a last-gasp 3-2 triumph at Ulm - coupled with Duisburg’s 1-1 draw at home to Viktoria Köln - clinched third place.
Key player: Torben Müsel
While Kaito Mizuta (nine goals, 12 assists), Marek Janssen (14 goals) and even goalkeeper Jakob Golz all deserve honourable mentions, Essen may have missed out on promotion altogether had it not been for midfielder Torben Müsel.
A model of consistency in the middle of the part, the 26-year-old former Kaiserslautern and Borussia Mönchengladbach man hit a purple patch at just the right time, netting seven goals in his final 11 league appearances - including a first-half double on the final day against Verl - to lift Essen back into third spot.
Coach: Uwe Koschinat
Former Wolfsburg defender Koschinat led Fortuna Köln to the fourth-division title in 2013/14 before leaving the club in 2018 to take charge of then Bundesliga 2 outfit Sandhausen.
After departing the Baden-Württemberg outfit in November 2020, the Koblenz native enjoyed brief spells with Saarbrücken, Arminia Bielefeld and Osnabrück before taking charge of Essen in December 2024.
The Ruhr club were deep in relegation trouble at the time, but only eventual champions Bielefeld picked up more points than Essen during the second half of the 2024/25 season as Koschinat’s charges finished the campaign in eighth spot.
Twelve months on, only Fürth stand in the way of Essen and a place in Germany’s second tier.
History
Champions in 1954/55 - and therefore the first German team to appear in the European Cup - Essen enjoyed seven seasons in the top flight between 1966 and 1977 but have spent the majority of the past two decades in the fourth division.
After returning to the third tier for the first time in 14 years in 2022, they enjoyed a season of consolidation under Christoph Dabrowski before gradually climbing the table, finishing seventh and eighth in 2023/24 and 2024/25 respectively.
Their most famous player is Helmut Rahn, who not only netted 102 goals in 220 appearances for the club but also scored twice - including Germany’s winning goal - in the 1954 FIFA World Cup final against Hungary, known to this day as the ‘Miracle of Bern’.
Stadium
Essen play their home matches at the Stadion an der Hafenstraße, which was opened in 2012 after the club’s previous stadium - the Georg Melches Stadion - was demolished.
Their new home, which they share with Women’s Bundesliga side SGS Essen, holds over 20,000 spectators. A capacity crowd watched Koschinat’s side lose narrowly to Borussia Dortmund in the DFB Cup earlier this season.
