Bundesliga 2026/27 (M)

When the ball was first kicked here, England's league was 75 years old and Serie A 34. Germany was the last of the major nations to build a national competition: until 1963 the champion emerged from a final tournament between the winners of five regional Oberligen —North, South, West, Southwest and Berlin— while the federation defended amateurism with a stubbornness that pushed its best players toward Italy and Spain.

A defeat changed that. The 1-0 loss to Yugoslavia in the quarter-finals of the 1962 World Cup in Chile convinced the DFB to centralise, and on 28 July 1962, at the Westfalenhallen in Dortmund, 103 of the 129 delegates voted in favour. Forty-six clubs applied and 16 were admitted, shared out by region and with one odd condition: one club per city. That is why Bayern were left out —Munich's slot went to 1860— and did not appear until 1965/66.

It all began on 24 August 1963, and the first goal took 58 seconds: Timo Konietzka scored it in Bremen and his Borussia Dortmund still lost 3-2. There were no television cameras at the ground, and the photographers were stationed behind the other goal, expecting Werder to go ahead. The first champions were 1. FC Köln, six points clear of Meidericher SV. The share-out has tilted completely since: 34 Bayern titles, eleven in a row between 2013 and 2023, and five apiece for Dortmund and Mönchengladbach. Gerd Müller left 365 goals behind; Charly Körbel, 602 appearances.

One hundred and twenty-two goals. That number sums up last season: Bayern broke their own record from 1971/72 —101, with Gerd Müller in the side— when Leon Goretzka struck the 102nd on 11 April 2026, in a 5-0 win at St. Pauli. The mark had stood for fifty-four years. Across Europe's big five leagues, only Torino in 1947/48 have scored more: 125.

The title was settled early. On 19 April a 4-2 win over Stuttgart crowned Bayern with four matchdays to spare; they finished on 89 points, sixteen clear of Borussia Dortmund. Harry Kane hit 36 goals, seventeen more than the runner-up in the scoring charts, Deniz Undav. And a detail almost everyone misses: the meanest defence was not the champions' but Dortmund's, 34 conceded against Bayern's 36.

Behind them everything tightened. Leipzig (65), Stuttgart (62), Hoffenheim (61) and Leverkusen (59) shared out the European places inside six points. Heidenheim and St. Pauli went down level on 26, the Hamburg side with the weakest attack in the division: 29 goals in 34 games. Sixteenth were VfL Wolfsburg, who lost the play-off to Paderborn and were relegated for the first time since coming up in 1997: twenty-nine straight seasons in the Bundesliga, and the German champions of 2009, dropping to the second tier.

Thirteen thousand and eighty inhabitants. That is Spiesen-Elversberg, in Saarland, and on Saturday 29 August its team hosts Bayer Leverkusen: SV Elversberg arrive as the 59th club in Bundesliga history and make their town the smallest ever to stage the division. Their Ursapharm-Arena an der Kaiserlinde holds around 10,000 and is being rebuilt to reach 15,500 midway through the season. At the other end of the list sits Dortmund's Signal Iduna Park: 81,365.

Up with them come Schalke 04, champions of the 2. Bundesliga, and Paderborn. Schalke bring the Revierderby back, absent from the top flight since the 2-2 of 11 March 2023 at the Veltins-Arena, (Schlotterbeck and Guerreiro; Bülter and Karaman). The matchday-12 meeting in Gelsenkirchen will be the 101st in the Bundesliga: 37 Dortmund wins, 32 for Schalke, 31 draws. The return comes on matchday 29.

Four dugouts changed hands over the summer: Adi Hütter signed for Eintracht Frankfurt on 31 May, Carles Martínez Novell replaced Kasper Hjulmand at Leverkusen on 4 June, Martín Demichelis took over from Ole Werner at Leipzig on 22 June and Mauro Lustrinelli arrived at Union Berlin on 1 July. Vincent Kompany stays at Bayern, Niko Kovač at Dortmund and Sebastian Hoeneß at Stuttgart; Miron Muslić comes up with Schalke. It all starts on Friday 28 August with Bayern against Stuttgart at the Allianz Arena, and another lost classic returns along the way: the Nordderby between Werder Bremen and Hamburg, on matchdays 10 and 27.

The table rules and there is no appeal: on 22 May 2027, with all nine final-day matches kicking off together at 15:30, whoever tops it is champion. No final, no play-off, and goal difference separates any tie. The small print lies further down. The top four enter the Champions League phase; fifth goes to the Europa League and sixth to the Conference League play-off. The DFB-Pokal winners take another European place and, when they are already qualified through the league —as Bayern were last season— that place slides down the table: which is how Freiburg reached Europe in seventh on 47 points.

At the bottom, seventeenth and eighteenth go down automatically. Sixteenth defends its place over two legs against the third-placed side in the 2. Bundesliga, on 27 and 31 May 2027.

Then there is the rule that sets this league apart. 50+1 requires the members' club to keep a majority of the votes in the company that runs the professional side; it dates from October 1998, when the federation allowed football departments to be spun off as businesses. One exception is allowed: anyone who has funded a club continuously for more than twenty years may take control. In 2026/27 only Bayer Leverkusen (Bayer AG) and VfL Wolfsburg (Volkswagen) use it, the latter now from the second tier. Hoffenheim left that list in November 2024, when Dietmar Hopp handed his voting majority back to the members without taking a cent in return. The matter is not closed: on 16 June 2025 the German competition authority backed the rule but warned that permanent exemptions cannot hold.