German football's big week: Supercup, Pokal and Bundesliga
German football returns in instalments, one competition at a time. The first round of the DFB-Pokal starts this Friday 21 August, on Saturday 22 the Signal Iduna Park stages the Supercup between Borussia Dortmund and Bayern, and on Friday 28 the 2026-27 Bundesliga finally kicks off with a heavyweight opener at the Allianz Arena: Bayern against Stuttgart, a re-run of the last cup final.
The league start comes a week later than its neighbours' because of this summer's World Cup. The opening match on the 28th kicks off at 8.30pm CET, and the rest of matchday one is spread across Saturday 29 and Sunday 30, with Dortmund hosting Hamburg and Leipzig entertaining Mönchengladbach; the league has still not fixed the exact kick-off times for those other eight fixtures.
Champions of the record books
Vincent Kompany's Bayern defend a title won with historic authority: 89 points, a 34th Bundesliga crown sealed as early as 19 April with four matchdays still to play, a single defeat all season and 122 goals, the highest tally the Bundesliga has ever seen. Harry Kane struck 36 times to land his third consecutive German golden boot, and Michael Olise laid on 19 assists. Dortmund followed on 73 points, Leipzig on 65, Stuttgart on 62 and Hoffenheim on 61; Leverkusen, sixth, missed out on the Champions League.
Wolfsburg, beaten in the relegation play-off, went down along with Heidenheim and St. Pauli. Coming up are Schalke 04, second-division champions and back after three years away, Elversberg, top-flight debutants and the 59th club in Bundesliga history, and Paderborn. Schalke's return brings back the Revierderby: the first of the two meetings comes in early December.
The Supercup, Saturday night in Dortmund
The Franz-Beckenbauer-Supercup takes place this Saturday 22 at 8.30pm CET at the Signal Iduna Park. Because Bayern completed the league and cup double — beating Stuttgart 3-0 in the cup final with a Kane hat-trick — Dortmund enter as league runners-up. Niko Kovač's side arrive with a serious argument: theirs was the best defence in the division, with only 34 goals conceded.
The Pokal packs 30 ties into four days
The first round of the German Cup runs from Friday 21 to Monday 24, with 30 ties on the schedule and a record twelve third-division clubs in the draw. Eye-catching pairings include Osnabrück v Bayern, HEBC Hamburg v Dortmund, Hansa Rostock v Stuttgart and Hallescher v Schalke. Bayern's and Dortmund's ties are pushed back to 1 and 2 September because of the Supercup.
The market: Diomande departs, Bayern shut the chequebook
The deal of the German summer was a departure rather than an arrival: Leipzig sold Yan Diomande to Real Madrid for a fixed €125m, rising to €140m, the biggest sale in their history and the third-largest the Bundesliga has ever made, level with the Wirtz deal and behind only those of Dembélé and Bellingham. Bayern, for their part, invested around €110m in Ismael Saibari, signed from PSV in July, and Nathaniel Brown, brought in from Eintracht for €55m, and have already announced there will be no further signings.
Dortmund, though, were busy this very week: after the move for Said El Mala collapsed, they wrapped up a rapid double worth around €50m in Joey Veerman, whose release clause at PSV they triggered on Tuesday 18 on a contract to 2031, and Giannis Konstantelias, signed from PAOK for €26m plus add-ons after passing his medical on Sunday. All of it ten days before their league opener.
Dugouts: two new faces near the top
Kompany continues in Munich under contract until 2029 and Kovač in Dortmund. The changes come just behind them: Leipzig appointed Martín Demichelis, formerly of River Plate, to replace Ole Werner, while Leverkusen turned to the Spaniard Carles Martínez Novell, a La Masia graduate and former Toulouse coach, who took over from Kasper Hjulmand on 1 July.
Bayern's injury scares
The champions reach their big week with a treatment room full of question marks. In the Telekom Cup against Leipzig on Saturday 15, Konrad Laimer went off in the 10th minute after a collision — sporting director Max Eberl admitted the player 'could no longer walk' — Kim Min-jae came off on 66 and Jamal Musiala collapsed with heatstroke minutes after scoring. Kane, Olise and Upamecano, meanwhile, rejoin the group this week after the extra rest they were granted following the World Cup.
A clear favourite, and hope for the rest
The bookmakers give Bayern an implied probability of retaining the title of close to 86 per cent, nine times higher than the figure they give Dortmund, and even the federation's survey of the league's head coaches points to them unanimously. Everyone else's hope goes by the name of the Supercup: winning it on Saturday would put the first crack in the wall before the league gets moving.
"A champion that scored 122 goals, a Ruhr derby back on the calendar and a Supercup before matchday one: Germany squeezes everything its season promises into seven days."