The Chicago Bears are a professional American football team based in Chicago. The Bears compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the National Football Conference (NFC) North division. They are one of two remaining franchises from the NFL's founding in 1920, along with the Arizona Cardinals (originally the Racine Cardinals of Chicago). The Bears play their home games at Soldier Field on the Near South Side, adjacent to Lake Michigan. The team headquarters, Halas Hall, is in the Chicago suburb of Lake Forest, Illinois. The Bears practice at adjoining facilities there during the season, and began hosting training camp at Halas Hall in 2020 after major renovations.
The franchise was founded in Decatur, Illinois on September 20, 1919 as the Decatur Staleys, a works team of the A. E. Staley starch company. They became professional on September 17, 1920 as charter members of the American Professional Football Association (forerunner of the NFL), and moved to Chicago in 1921. They became the Bears in 1922. The Bears played home games at Wrigley Field on Chicago's North Side through the 1970 season; they have played since then at Soldier Field. The team have won nine NFL Championships, eight before the AFL–NFL merger and one Super Bowl. They hold the NFL records for the most enshrinees in the Pro Football Hall of Fame and the most retired jersey numbers. The Bears' NFL championships and overall victories are second behind the Green Bay Packers, with whom they have a long-standing rivalry. The Bears reached their greatest modern period of success in the 1980s under head coach Mike Ditka, with whom they won Super Bowl XX in the 1985 season. The Bears appeared in their second Super Bowl during the 2006 season, which they lost to the Indianapolis Colts.
Since 2006, the Bears have struggled to find regular success, going fifteen years in between playoff wins from 2011 to 2026. During that time, the Bears have had 23 different starting quarterbacks and six different head coaches. In September 2025, a sale of a minority stake in the team valued the Bears at $8.9 billion.
In March of 1920 a man telephoned me ... George Chamberlain and he was general superintendent of the A.E. Staley Company ... In 1919, [the company's Fellowship Club] had formed a football team. It had done well against other local teams but Mr. Staley wanted to build it into a team that could compete successfully with the best semi-professional and industrial teams in the country ... Mr. Chamberlain asked if I would like to come to Decatur and work for the Staley Company.
Originally named the Decatur Staleys, the club was established by the A. E. Staley food starch company of Decatur, Illinois, as a company team. This was the typical start for several early professional football franchises. The team played independently in 1919, winning the Central Illinois Championship. The company hired George Halas and Edward "Dutch" Sternaman in 1920 to run the team. The 1920 Decatur Staleys season was their inaugural regular season completed in the newly formed American Professional Football Association (AFPA) (later renamed the National Football League (NFL) in 1922).
Full control of the team was turned over to Halas and Sternaman in 1921. Official team and league records cite Halas as the founder as he took over the team in 1920 when it became a charter member of the NFL.
The team moved to Chicago in 1921, where the club was renamed the Chicago Staleys; Under an agreement reached by Halas and Sternaman with Staley, they received US$5,000 to keep the name "Staleys" for the 1921 season.
In 1922, Halas changed the team name from the Staleys to the Bears. The team moved into Wrigley Field, home of the Chicago Cubs baseball franchise. As with several early NFL franchises, the Bears derived their nickname from their city's baseball team (bears' young are called "cubs"). Halas liked the bright orange-and-blue colors of his alma mater, the University of Illinois, and the Bears adopted those colors as their own, albeit in a darker shade of each (the blue is Pantone 5395, navy blue, and the orange is Pantone 1665, similar to burnt orange).
The Staleys/Bears dominated the league in the early years. Their rivalry with the Chicago Cardinals, the oldest in the NFL (and a crosstown rival from 1920 to 1959), was key in four out of the first six league titles. During the league's first six years, the Bears lost twice to the Canton Bulldogs (who took two league titles over that span), and split with their crosstown rival Cardinals (going 4–4–2 against each other over that span), but no other team in the league defeated the Bears more than a single time. During that span, the Bears posted 34 shutouts.
The Bears' rivalry with the Green Bay Packers is one of the oldest and most storied in American professional sports, dating back to 1921 (the Green Bay Packers were an independent team until they joined the NFL in 1921). In one infamous incident that year, Halas got the Packers expelled from the league in order to prevent their signing a particular player, and then graciously got them re-admitted after the Bears had closed the deal with that player.
The franchise was an early success under Halas, capturing the NFL Championship in 1921 and remaining competitive throughout the decade.
On December 7, 1924, the Bears claimed the championship after defeating the Cleveland Bulldogs, even putting the title "World's Champions" on their 1924 team photo. The NFL had ruled, however, that games after November 30 did not count towards league standings, and the Bears had to settle for second place behind Cleveland. Their only first losing season came in 1929; it remained the team's only such season until 1945.
During the 1920s the club was responsible for triggering the NFL's long-standing rule that a player could not be signed until his college's senior class had graduated. The NFL took that action as a consequence of the Bears' aggressive signing of famous University of Illinois player Red Grange within a day of his final game as a collegian.
Despite much of the on-field success, the Bears were a team in trouble. They faced the problem of increased operating costs and flatlined attendance. The Bears would only draw roughly 5,000–6,000 fans a game, while a University of Chicago game would draw 40,000–50,000 fans a game. By adding top college football draw Red Grange to the roster, the Bears knew that they found something to draw more fans to their games. C.C. Pyle was able to secure a $2,000 per game contract for Grange, and in one of the first games, the Bears defeated the Green Bay Packers, 21–0. However, Grange remained on the sidelines while learning the team's plays from Bears quarterback Joey Sternaman. Later in 1925, the Bears went on a barnstorming tour, showing off the best football player of the day. 75,000 people paid to see Grange lead the Bears to a 17–7 victory over the Los Angeles Tigers, who were a quickly put together team of West Coast college all-stars. After a loss to San Francisco, the Bears cruised to a 60–3 win over a semi-pro team called the Portland All Stars.
Any hopes that Grange would lead the Bears to glory in 1926 were quickly dashed. A failed contract talk led to Grange bolting to a team in the newly-formed American Football League (AFL), the New York Yankees, which was owned by Pyle. The Bears also lost star quarterback Joey Sternaman, who joined the Chicago Bulls of the AFL. The Bears replaced Grange with Paddy Driscoll, a star football player in his own right. The Bears used the money made from the Grange barn-storming tour to sign the man who replaced him. Grange split his time between making movies and playing football. However, the time was not right to have two competing pro football leagues, and the AFL folded after only one season. Grange would return to the Bears.
After the financial losses of the 1932 Championship season, Halas's partner Dutch Sternaman left the organization. Halas maintained full control of the Bears until his death in 1983. He also coached the team off-and-on for forty seasons, an NFL record. In the 1932 "Unofficial" NFL Championship, the Bears defeated the Portsmouth Spartans in the first NFL playoff game. Due to blizzard conditions in Chicago, the game was played at Chicago Stadium, marking it as the first indoor NFL game.