DFB-Pokal: why the minnows keep beating the Bundesliga

On 6 June 2026, at the Deutsches Fußballmuseum in Dortmund, referee Deniz Aytekin pulled HEBC Hamburg, an Oberliga club, out of the amateur pot and paired them with Borussia Dortmund. Home advantage went to HEBC. That is not a charming accident or a stroke of luck: it is exactly what the rules were designed to produce.

The DFB-Pokal throws up more upsets than almost any other national cup in Europe, and the explanation lies neither in the German character nor in the magic of football. It lies in the draw. Before running through the great giant-killings it is worth understanding the mechanism, because the mechanism is the cause and the giant-killings are the consequence.

Two pots, 64 teams and one rule that changes everything

Sixty-four teams contest the tournament. According to the DFB itself, the field is made up of the 18 Bundesliga clubs and the 18 from the 2. Bundesliga of the previous season, the top four finishers in the 3. Liga, the 21 winners of the regional cups run by each state association, and three extra places shared out among the associations with the most affiliated clubs.

For the first-round draw, those 64 teams are split into two pots of 32. The professional pot holds the 18 Bundesliga clubs and the 14 best-placed sides from the 2. Bundesliga. Everything else goes into the amateur pot: the bottom four from the second tier, the four representatives of the 3. Liga and every one of the regional cup winners.

The draw always pairs one team from each pot, and the ball is taken out of the amateur pot first. That sequence has a mechanical, unavoidable consequence: the small club is at home. All 18 Bundesliga clubs, without a single exception, begin every season with an away day against lower-league opposition.

If the modest club's ground does not meet the DFB's safety requirements, the tie is moved to a suitable venue in the region, but home advantage still belongs to the smaller side. From the quarter-finals the criterion changes and it is simply whichever team is drawn first. There are no second legs and no replays either: if the sides are level, two periods of fifteen minutes are played and, if it is still level, penalties. One match, one attempt.

That is the engine of the upsets. An Oberliga club does not need to win twice, or survive ninety minutes at the Allianz Arena. It needs to survive ninety minutes on its own pitch, in front of its own supporters, against opponents who turn up in August with pre-season half done and eleven starters who do not quite recognise each other yet.

How a village club reaches the pot

The other half of the design is the way in. Twenty-one places go to the winners of the Verbandspokale, the cups run by Germany's 21 regional associations. Those cups are entered from district and county competitions, which means a club in the fifth, sixth or even seventh tier can qualify for the DFB-Pokal without ever having won promotion. All it takes is a good run of regional ties over the course of a year.

The result shows up every summer. In the 2026/27 first round, drawn on 6 June, the system produced ties such as the HEBC Hamburg meeting with Borussia Dortmund already mentioned, SC St. Tönis against Eintracht Frankfurt and VfB Krieschow, also of the Oberliga, against FSV Mainz 05. The round is played from 21 to 24 August 2026, apart from the matches involving Bayern Munich, who travel to VfL Osnabrück, and Dortmund, both put back to 1 and 2 September because of the Franz-Beckenbauer-Supercup.

1974: the mother of all cup shocks

Amateur clubs have only been allowed into the tournament since 1974, when the competition was expanded. There was a scandal in the very first year. On 26 October 1974, in the second round, VfB Eppingen, an amateur club from northern Baden, beat Hamburger SV 2-1, and Hamburg were top of the Bundesliga at the time.

Both goals were scored by Gerd Störzer, a former 1860 München professional turned weekend footballer, and goalkeeper Volker Gerhardt kept the result intact with a string of saves. In Germany that game is known as the Mutter aller Pokalsensationen, the mother of all cup shocks. Eppingen went on to knock out SV Sandhausen in the next round before losing 2-0 to Werder Bremen in the quarter-finals.

Weinheim, Vestenbergsgreuth and Bayern's cup record

No club embodies the structural vulnerability of the format better than Bayern Munich, precisely because they are the side that has most often had to go out in August and play at an unfamiliar ground in a borrowed dressing room.

On 4 August 1990, FV 09 Weinheim won 1-0 at the Sepp-Herberger-Stadion with a penalty converted by Thomas Schwechheimer. That Bayern team fielded newly crowned world champions in Jürgen Kohler and Stefan Reuter, as well as the Dane Brian Laudrup. It was the first time since their cup debut in 1957 that the Bavarians had gone out in the first round.

Four years later, on 14 August 1994, TSV Vestenbergsgreuth, a Regionalliga side from a village of around 2,000 people, won 1-0 again through a Roland Stein goal. It was the first competitive match of Oliver Kahn's and Giovanni Trapattoni's Bayern careers, and it remains one of the most frequently cited defeats in the club's history.

The format has kept extracting tolls in later rounds too. In the second round of 2021/22, Borussia Mönchengladbach thrashed Bayern 5-0 at Borussia-Park, with goals from Koné, a Bensebaini double and an Embolo double: the heaviest Bavarian defeat in the history of the competition. And in November 2023, 1. FC Saarbrücken, then in the 3. Liga, knocked them out 2-1 with a stoppage-time goal after Thomas Müller had put the visitors in front.

When the underdog goes all the way

The shocks do not run out in the first round. In 1991/92 Hannover 96, then a 2. Bundesliga side, eliminated five Bundesliga clubs, namely Bochum, Dortmund, Karlsruher SC, Werder Bremen and, in the final, Borussia Mönchengladbach, and won the cup. On 23 May 1992, at the Olympiastadion in Berlin, after a 0-0 draw over 120 minutes, goalkeeper Jörg Sievers saved two penalties and Hannover came through 4-3 in the shootout. They remain the only club from outside the top flight to have lifted the DFB-Pokal.

A year later, in 1993, Hertha BSC Amateure, the Berlin club's reserve side competing in the third tier, reached the final and lost 1-0 to Bayer 04 Leverkusen on 12 June at that same Olympiastadion. They are still the only purely amateur team to have played in a final of the tournament; reserve sides were excluded from the competition shortly afterwards.

In 1997 it was the turn of Energie Cottbus, then in the Regionalliga, who reached the final on 14 June and lost 2-0 to VfB Stuttgart. In 2019/20, 1. FC Saarbrücken became the first fourth-tier club to reach a semi-final: they knocked out Fortuna Düsseldorf in the quarter-finals on penalties, with four Daniel Batz saves in the shootout, before losing 3-0 to Bayer Leverkusen.

And the most recent case is, in footballing terms, the day before yesterday. Arminia Bielefeld reached the 2025 final from the 3. Liga, having knocked out Bayer Leverkusen 2-1 in the semi-finals, and lost 4-2 to VfB Stuttgart on 24 May in Berlin. They were the fourth third-tier club to play in a DFB-Pokal final, and that same season the club also won promotion to the 2. Bundesliga.

""Der Pokal hat seine eigenen Gesetze": the cup has its own laws, as the German saying goes, although in truth those laws are set out with complete precision in the rules of the draw."

The last edition, mind you, ended with the most predictable outcome of all: Bayern Munich won their twenty-first title on 23 May 2026 with a Harry Kane hat-trick in a 3-0 win over VfB Stuttgart. The favourite almost always ends up lifting the cup in Berlin. The charm of the DFB-Pokal is that, to get there, they first have to go and play in a village on a Saturday in August, with no safety net and a referee blowing for full time after ninety minutes.

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