Who will Bayern's opponents be in the 2026 DFB Cup final? | OneFootball

Swabians or Badeners? Bayern’s opponents in the DFB Cup final at Berlin's Olympiastadion on 23 May will be decided on Thursday night (kick-off 20:45 CEST) in the second semi-final between VfB Stuttgart and SC Freiburg. The unusual kick-off time for the cup is due to the fact that both teams were in Bundesliga action last Sunday. fcbayern.com examines the two potential opponents.

Will it be a fourth encounter with VfB this season? After the success in the Franz Beckenbauer Supercup (2-1) at the start of the season, the Munich men also came out on top in both league encounters, winning 5-0 in Stuttgart and then 4-2 in Munich at the weekend to extend their winning run against the Swabians to five games in all competitions. FCB usually get the better of VfB in the DFB Cup, too. In ten meetings, the record cup winners have lost just once – 3-0 at the Neckarstadion in the last 16 in 1990. That aside, Bayern have dominated this prestigious fixture, keeping a clean sheet on four occasions and never requiring extra time or penalties. The two encounters in the final obviously stand out: in 1986, Bayern won the cup 5-2 thanks to a hat-trick from Roland Wohlfarth and two goals from Michael Rummenigge. In 2013, they even completed the first treble in the club’s history thanks to a 3-2 win in the final, with the goals coming from Mario Gómez (2) and Thomas Müller.

However, cup holders Stuttgart proved last year they can also win finals, beating Arminia Bielefeld 4-2. On the way to this year’s semi-finals, Sebastian Hoeneß’s side beat second-tier Eintracht Braunschweig 8-7 on penalties in the first round, then won 2-0 at both Mainz and Bochum before a 3-0 victory at Holstein Kiel in the quarter-finals. In the Bundesliga, Stuttgart are currently on course for Champions League qualification in fourth place.

Or will the two German teams left in Europe meet in Berlin? As well as reaching the DFB Cup final for only the second time after 2022, Europa League semi-finalists SC Freiburg also have the chance of a first European final in the club’s history. On their way to the final four in this year’s cup competition, the Black Forest outfit saw off Sportfreunde Lotte (2-0), Fortuna Düsseldorf (3-1) and SV Darmstadt (2-0), before sampling the Berlin air in the quarter-finals away to Bundesliga 2 club Hertha BSC. Julian Schuster’s men had to dig in at the final venue before eventually progressing on penalties.

Freiburg have largely come away empty-handed from recent meetings with Bayern, though. In fact, their only success in the last 21 competitive matches between the two sides came in the quarter-finals of the DFB Cup in 2022/23, when SCF pulled off a shock 2-1 win at the Allianz Arena. Their only previous encounter in the competition, in the 2004/05 quarter-finals, saw Bayern dump out Freiburg, who went on to be relegated from the Bundesliga that season, 7-0. Claudio Pizarro with a hat-trick, Michael Ballack and Roy Makaay fired the Bavarians into a 5-0 lead after just 39 minutes, with Pizarro adding another and Vahid Hashemian rounding off the scoring.

How Bayern sealed their place in the final in Leverkusen:

Bayern overcome Leverkusen to reach final