The most useful answer today is this: Sergipe is Sergipe's biggest state champion in any reasonable criteria applied to the 2000 edition. The list of champions updated by ge on March 14, 2026, identifying the Sergipe Football Federation as the source, presents Sergipe with 38 titles, Confiança with 24 and Itabaiana with 11. The problem is that this same list includes 2000 for Sergipe and Confiança, although another publication by ge himself, dated January 8, 2026, records that that edition continued without an officially recognized champion.
This creates an important difference between the count that circulates in rankings and the sporting status of the 2000 tournament. If 2000 is counted for both clubs, there are 38 for Sergipe and 24 for Confiança. If the year is removed from the two while the impasse remains unresolved, the count drops to 37 and 23. Itabaiana remains with 11. In both scenarios, Sergipe remains Sergipe's biggest champion.
The account published in 2026
After beating Confiança 1-0 in the second leg of the 2026 final, after a 1-1 draw in the first leg, Sergipe once again won the state championship. The list of ge champions was updated on the same day of the decision and now presents 38 titles for the Colorado club, 24 for Confiança and 11 for Itabaiana.
The same page lists the champions year by year and records 1982 as Sergipe and Itabaiana, in addition to 2000 as Sergipe and Confiança. In the footer of the list, the source indicated is the FSF. This explains where the most repeated count on sports pages comes from: it treats 2000 as a shared title for the purpose of honors.
The point of attention is that the published count does not, in itself, end the discussion about the 2000 approval. In January 2026, before the start of the new state, the president of the FSF, Milton Dantas, stated that he was reopening the process and seeking a definition from the competent bodies. In the same report, the 2000 tournament was described as still having no officially recognized champion.
The divergence becomes visible when comparing another database updated shortly after the final. The Champions of Football website, updated on March 15, 2026 and which declares to use the FSF among its sources, presents Sergipe with 37 titles, Confiança with 23 and Itabaiana with 11. In the year-by-year list, 2000 appears marked with an asterisk, without champion and runner-up filled, accompanied by the observation that Sergipe was declared champion, but the competition remains sub judice. Thus, the two answers that most confuse the reader - 38/24/11 and 37/23/11 - can be reproduced by current sources that treat 2000 in different ways.
Why 2000 changes the numbers for Sergipe and Confiança
The 2000 edition is worth one unit for each rival when the source adopts sharing in the historical series. This is why the published count reaches 38 for Sergipe and 24 for Confiança. If the year is excluded until a formal definition, the result becomes 37 and 23.
The curiosity is that the difference between rivals remains at 14 titles if both receive 2000 or if neither receives. The interval would only change if a future decision awarded the championship exclusively to one of them. If Sergipe were alone with the title, the score would be 38 to 23, a difference of 15. If Confiança were the only champion, it would be 37 to 24, a difference of 13. None of these hypotheses removes Sergipe from its historic leadership.
For Confiança, the effect of 2000 is not just numerical. Milton Dantas himself noted in January 2026 that recognizing the club as champion that year, even jointly, would also mean recognizing a sequence of three titles between 2000, 2001 and 2002. Therefore, the dispute interferes with the way the club's history is told, not just the final sum.
What happened in the 2000 decision
Sergipe and Confiança reached the decisive phase in a championship that did not end in a conventional way. The final was scheduled for November 26, 2000, at the Sabino Ribeiro Stadium. According to the reconstruction published by ge in 2026, Sergipe did not attend, citing security problems, with support from the Military Police.
The Federation rescheduled the match for December 3rd at the Presidente Médici Stadium, in Itabaiana. This time, the one who did not attend was Confiança. Sergipe would be declared champion, but the case went to the sports court and the discussion continued. In 2002, the Infonet Portal recorded that there was still a pending trial at the Court of Justice of the Federation and that Confiança's defense intended to appeal to the higher court if the previous decision was upheld.
The current FSF page dedicated to Confiança summarizes the impasse by saying that Sergipe won in the TJD and Confiança won in the STJD, adding that the dispute continued in the sports courts. The report from January 2026 shows the president of the Federation stating that he was reopening the process and that the FSF would follow what was determined by the STJD.
There is also a journalistic record from 2011 on the Infonet Portal according to which the then president of the FSF, Carivaldo de Souza, tried to make Sergipe and Confiança official as champions after obtaining a favorable opinion from the STJD. This record helps explain why some bases began to treat 2000 as a shared title. However, it did not eliminate the controversy: the 2026 public position again treated the championship as pending a definitive solution.
In the public sources consulted until August 20, 2026, there was no subsequent decision from the FSF or the STJD that unequivocally closed this process after the January declaration. Therefore, the safest way to publish the numbers is to separate the conventional count from the current state of the controversy.
Why 1982 is a different case
At first glance, 1982 looks the same as 2000 because it also ended with two clubs linked to a decision off the field. But the consolidated historical situation is different.
Club Sportivo Sergipe's own title page records 1982 as a shared championship with Itabaiana and counts it as Sergipe's 20th title. The FSF page dedicated to Itabaiana, in turn, describes the sequence of 1978, 1979, 1980, 1981 and 1982 as a fifth championship for the mountain club. The list of champions updated in 2026 also places Sergipe and Itabaiana together in 1982.
The conflict that season went through sporting justice. Records from Jornal da Cidade from 1983 show that Sergipe had been proclaimed champion at the state level and that Itabaiana appealed to the STJD. The historical solution later incorporated into the records was the division of the title, and it appears consistently in the institutional memories of the two clubs and in the list of champions used today.
In 2000, on the contrary, the FSF itself still presented the dispute as pending on its Confiança page, and its president declared in 2026 that he was reopening the process. This is the point that separates the cases: 1982 appears consolidated as a shared title in the official history used today; 2000 remains beset by an inconsistency between the published count and the lack of clearly localized formal closure.
Audit of the titles of the three greatest champions
The comparison can be reproduced using the list of years below, following the list of champions updated in March 2026 and treating 2000 prominently.
Sergipe
In the published count, Sergipe has 38 titles: 1922, 1924, 1927, 1928, 1929, 1932, 1933, 1937, 1940, 1943, 1955, 1961, 1964, 1967, 1970, 1971, 1972, 1974, 1975, 1982, 1984, 1985, 1989, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1999, 2000, 2003, 2013, 2016, 2018, 2021, 2022 and 2026.
If 2000 is removed while the dispute remains open, the total becomes 37. The lead over the other clubs remains wide.
Trust
In the published count, Confiança has 24 titles: 1951, 1954, 1962, 1963, 1965, 1968, 1976, 1977, 1983, 1986, 1988, 1990, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2004, 2008, 2009, 2014, 2015, 2017, 2020, 2024 and 2025.
Removing 2000, the total becomes 23. The eventual confirmation of that year would also change the reading of the sequence 2000, 2001 and 2002 to a third championship.
Itabaiana
Itabaiana appears with 11 titles: 1969, 1973, 1978, 1979, 1980, 1981, 1982, 1997, 2005, 2012 and 2023. The 1982 edition is counted as a shared title with Sergipe and is part of the fifth mountain championship from 1978 to 1982.
So which number should be used?
For a quick answer about the ranking circulating in 2026, use Sergipe 38, Confiança 24 and Itabaiana 11, making it clear that this count includes 2000 for Aracaju's two rivals. This is the form adopted by the updated ge list with indication of the FSF source.
For a more rigorous audit, also show the count without the pending edit: Sergipe 37,
Confiança 23 and Itabaiana 11. This is not just a hypothetical account: it is the total shown by the Champions of Football in its update of March 15, 2026, which leaves 2000 without a champion in the table. The second line does not state that the other titles were individually re-examined or approved in a new procedure; it just doesn't add up to the edition that the Federation itself still treated as open in 2026.
The conclusion, therefore, does not depend on the controversy: Sergipe is the biggest champion in Sergipe. What 2000 changes is the way of presenting the exact number of titles from Sergipe and Confiança and the reading of historical sequences, especially Azulino's possible third championship from 2000 to 2002. The most common mistake is to transform a list of achievements into proof that the legal and sporting dispute has already ended. The sources show that they are two different questions.
