Fußball-Club Bayern München e. V. (FCB, German: [ˈfuːsbalˌklʊp ˈbaɪɐn ˈmʏnçn̩]), commonly known as Bayern Munich (German: Bayern München), FC Bayern (German: [ˌɛft͡seː ˈbaɪɐn] ) or simply Bayern, is a professional sports club based in Munich, Germany. They are most known for their men's professional football team, who play in the Bundesliga, the top tier of the German football league system. Bayern are the most successful club in German football and are among the world's most decorated, having won a record 35 national titles, including eleven consecutive titles from 2013 to 2023 and a record 21 national cups, the DFB-Pokal, alongside one of the highest number of top European titles.
Bayern Munich was founded in 1900 by eleven players, led by Franz John. Although Bayern won its first national championship in 1932, the club was not selected for the Bundesliga during its inception in 1963. The club found success in the mid/late-1960s, but the pinnacle came in the 1970s under the captaincy of Franz Beckenbauer, as they won the European Cup three consecutive times (1974–1976). Overall, Bayern have won six European Cup/UEFA Champions League titles (a German record), winning their sixth title in the 2020 final as part of the treble, and it became the second European club to achieve this feat twice. Furthermore, the club is one of five teams that have earned the right to keep the trophy and to wear a multiple-winner badge. The club has reached the final of the European Cup/UEFA Champions League 11 times, a joint second-most of any club in the history of the competition and is also second placed in numbers of semi-final appearances with 22.
Bayern has also won one UEFA Cup, one European Cup Winners' Cup, two UEFA Super Cups, two FIFA Club World Cups and two Intercontinental Cups, making it one of the most successful European clubs internationally, and the only German club to have won both international titles. Bayern players have accumulated five Ballon d'Or awards with multiple players coming in the second position in the award, two The Best FIFA Men's Player awards, six European Golden Shoe and three UEFA Men's Player of the Year awards, including UEFA Club Footballer of the Year.
The club had at least one player in eleven consecutive FIFA World Cup finals from 1986 to 2022.
By winning the 2020 FIFA Club World Cup, Bayern Munich became only the second club to win the "sextuple" (winning the League, Cup, and Champions League in one season followed by the Domestic Supercup, UEFA Supercup and Club World Cup in the next season), or all trophies that a club can win in a calendar year. Bayern Munich is one of five clubs to have won all three of UEFA's main club competitions and the only German club to achieve that. The club has traditional local rivalries with 1860 Munich and 1. FC Nürnberg. The rivalry it has with Borussia Dortmund is known as Der Klassiker.
Bayern Munich is one of the most widely supported football clubs in the world, and in November 2025, Bayern had more than 432,500 official club members, and 4,425 officially registered fan clubs, with over 328,564 members, making the club the largest sports club in the world by membership. The club has other departments for chess, handball, basketball, gymnastics, bowling, table tennis and senior football, with more than 1,500 active members. 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 crest shows the white and blue flag of Bavaria. Bayern Munich has the largest revenue out of any German sports club and is one of the highest-earning football clubs in the world. Bayern earned a record breaking €978.3 million in the 2024–25 season.
Bayern Munich was founded by members of a Munich gymnastics club (MTV 1879). When a congregation of members of MTV 1879 decided on 27 February 1900 that the footballers of the club would not be allowed to join the German Football Association (DFB), eleven members of the football division left the congregation and on the same evening founded Fußball-Club Bayern München. Within a few months, Bayern achieved high-scoring victories against all local rivals, including a 15–0 win against Nordstern, and reached the semi-finals of the 1900–01 South German championship. In the following years, the club won some local trophies, and, in 1910–11, Bayern joined the newly founded "Kreisliga", the first regional Bavarian league. The club won this league in its first year, but did not win it again until the beginning of the First World War in 1914, which halted all football activities in Germany. By the end of its first decade of founding, Bayern had its first German national team player, Max Gablonsky. By 1920, it had over 700 members, making it the largest football club in Munich.
In the years after the war, Bayern won several regional competitions before winning its first South German championship in 1926, an achievement repeated two years later. Its first national title was gained in 1932, when coach Richard "Little Dombi" Kohn led the team to the German championship by defeating Eintracht Frankfurt 2–0 in the final.
The rise of Adolf Hitler to power put an abrupt end to Bayern's development. Club president Kurt Landauer and the coach, both of whom were Jewish, left the country. Many others in the club were also purged. Bayern was taunted as the "Jew's club", while local rival 1860 Munich gained much support. After a friendly match in Switzerland, some Bayern players greeted Landauer, who was a spectator, and the club was subject to continued discrimination. Despite these associations, club president Josef Kellner (1938-45) was an NSDAP member and administrator in the Sudetenland. Bayern was also affected by the ruling that football players had to be full amateurs again, which led to the move of gifted young centre-forward Oskar Rohr to Switzerland. In the following years, Bayern could not sustain its role of contender for the national title, achieving mid-table results in its regional league instead.
After the end of the Second World War in 1945, Bayern became a member of the Oberliga Süd, the southern conference of the German first division, which was split five ways at that time. Bayern struggled, hiring and firing 13 coaches between 1945 and 1963. Landauer returned from exile in 1947, and was once again appointed club president, the tenure lasted until 1951. He remains as the club's president with the longest accumulated tenure. Landauer has been deemed the most important figure in Bayern's transition to a professional club. In 1955, the club was relegated but returned to the Oberliga in the following season and won the DFB-Pokal for the first time, beating Fortuna Düsseldorf 1–0 in the final.
The club struggled financially, though, verging on bankruptcy at the end of the 1950s. President Reitlinger was ousted in the club's elections of 1958 by the industrialist Roland Endler, who provided financial stability for the club. Under his reign, Bayern had its best years in the Oberliga. Endler was no longer a candidate in 1962, when Wilhelm Neudecker, who became wealthy in the postwar construction boom, replaced him.
In 1963, the Oberligas in Germany were consolidated into one national league, the Bundesliga. Five teams from the Oberliga South were admitted. The key to qualifying for the Bundesliga was the accumulated record of the last twelve years, where Bayern was only the sixth-ranked club. To boot, local rivals 1860 Munich, ranked seventh, were champions of the last Oberliga-Süd season and were given preference on the basis of this achievement. After initial protests by Bayern for alleged mistreatment remained fruitless, president Neudecker rose to the challenge and hired Zlatko Čajkovski, who in 1962 led 1. FC Köln to the national championship. Fielding a team with young players like Franz Beckenbauer, Gerd Müller and Sepp Maier – who would later be collectively referred to as the axis, they achieved promotion to the Bundesliga in 1965.