Sport-Club Paderborn 07 e. The club has enjoyed its greatest success since the turn of the millennium, becoming a fixture in the 2. Bundesliga before securing promotion to the Bundesliga in the β14 season. However, they got relegated to the 2. Bundesliga after only a season in the top division, and then again to the 3. Liga the season after. This relegation streak almost continued as low as the Regionalliga West, but were saved in the season because Munich were refused a license.
The club returned to 2. Bundesliga, reaching 2nd place in the β19 season and was promoted to the Bundesliga. The club finished 18th in the β20 season and returned to the 2. After Neuhaus had been promoted to the 2.
Bundesliga and finished last in , this set-up had reached its athletic and financial ceiling. In , the club adopted its current identity by assuming the name SC Paderborn 07 , named after TuS Neuhaus's founding date During most of the s, the recently merged club competed in the third-tier Oberliga Westfalen, where they counted among the leading teams [ ] but never achieved promotion.
In , Paderborn won the league and thereby qualified for the promotion playoffs. Except for a brief stint in the fourth tier, Paderborn enjoyed [ ] moderate success with regular trips to the DFB Pokal. It later emerged that latter match had been affected by match fixing; referee Robert Hoyzer had received a bribe to let Paderborn win the game.
Paderborn returned to the 2. Bundesliga for the first time in nearly thirty years at the end of the same season. All of this helped to establish the club as a regular component of Germany's professional football landscape. Having never been in the Bundesliga before, Paderborn were described [ ] [ ] as "the biggest outsider in Bundesliga history" going into the season.
