Fußball-Club Bayern München e.V., commonly known as FC Bayern München, Bayern Munich, or FC Bayern, is a German sports club based in Munich, Bavaria. It is best known for its professional football team, which plays in the Bundesliga, the top tier of the German football league system, and is the most successful club in German football history, having won a record 30 national titles and 20 national cups.
FC Bayern was founded in 1900 by eleven football players led by Franz John. Although Bayern won its first national championship in 1932, the club was not selected for the Bundesliga at its inception in 1963. The club had its period of greatest success in the middle of the 1970s when, under the captaincy of Franz Beckenbauer, it won the European Cup three times in a row (1974–76). Overall, Bayern has reached eleven European Cup/UEFA Champions League finals, most recently winning their sixth title in 2020 as part of their second continental treble (they also had previously won the treble in 2013). Bayern has also won one UEFA Cup, one European Cup Winners' Cup, one UEFA Super Cup, one FIFA Club World Cup and two Intercontinental Cups, making it one of the most successful European clubs internationally. Since the formation of the Bundesliga, Bayern has been the dominant club in German football with 22 titles and has won five of the last ten titles. They have traditional local rivalries with TSV 1860 München and 1. FC Nürnberg, as well as a contemporary rivalry with Borussia Dortmund. Bayern became the second team to win sextuple, by winning all major competitions they participated in 2020 (including 2020 FIFA Club World Cup, which was actually held in 2021).
Since the beginning of the 2005–06 season, Bayern has played its home games at the Allianz Arena. Previously the team had played at Munich's Olympiastadion for 33 years. The team colours are red and white, and the team crest shows the white and blue flag of Bavaria. In terms of revenue, Bayern Munich is the biggest sports club in Germany and the fourth biggest football club in the world, generating €368.4 million in 2012. With 223,985 members Bayern is the second-biggest sports club of the world in terms of membership, only just short of the world’s first on this measure, Portuguese club Benfica. There are also 3,576 officially-registered fan clubs with 262,077 members. The club has other departments for chess, handball, basketball, gymnastics, bowling, table tennis, referees, and senior football with more than 1,100 active members.
At the end of the 2019–20 season, Bayern was ranked first in the UEFA's club coefficient rankings.
Herbert Hainer
Current season
Bundesliga 2023–24
