The Super Bowl is the annual American football game that determines the champion of the National Football League (NFL). The game culminates a season that begins in the previous calendar year, and is the conclusion of the NFL playoffs. The winner receives the Vince Lombardi Trophy. The contest is held in an American city, chosen three to four years beforehand, [1] usually at warm-weather sites or domed stadiums. [2] Since January 1971, the winner of the American Football Conference (AFC) Championship Game has faced the winner of the National Football Conference (NFC) Championship Game in the culmination of the NFL playoffs.
Before the 1970 merger between the American Football League (AFL) and the National Football League (NFL), the two leagues met in four such contests. The first two were marketed as the "AFL–NFL World Championship Game", but were also casually referred to as "the Super Bowl game" during the television broadcast. [3] Super Bowl III in January 1969 was the first such game that carried the "Super Bowl" moniker in official marketing; the names "Super Bowl I" and "Super Bowl II" were retroactively applied to the first two games. [4]
A total of 20 franchises, including teams that have relocated to another city or changed their name, have won the Super Bowl. [5] There are four NFL teams that have never appeared in a Super Bowl: the Cleveland Browns, Detroit Lions, Jacksonville Jaguars, and Houston Texans, though both the Browns (1950, 1954, 1955, 1964) and Lions (1935, 1952, 1953, 1957) had won NFL Championship Games prior to the creation of the Super Bowl in the 1966 season.
The 1972 Dolphins capped off the only perfect season in NFL history with their victory in Super Bowl VII. Only two franchises have ever won the Super Bowl while hosting at their home stadiums: the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in Super Bowl LV and the Los Angeles Rams in Super Bowl LVI.
Numbers in parentheses in the table are Super Bowl appearances as of the date of that Super Bowl and are used as follows:
(1966–1969) | (1970–present) |
---|---|
American Football League (AFL) | American Football Conference (AFC) |
AFL champion a (4, 2–2) | AFC champion A (55, 27–28) |
National Football League (NFL) | National Football Conference (NFC) |
NFL champion n (4, 2–2) | NFC champion N (55, 28–27) |
W Indicates a team that made the playoffs as a wild card team (rather than by winning a division).
Game | Date/ | Away team | Home team | Venue | City | Ref |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
LX | February 8, 2026 (2025) [sb 18] | 2025–26 NFC champion N | 2025–26 AFC champion A | Levi's Stadium (2) | Santa Clara, California (3) | |
LXI | February 14, 2027 (2026) [sb 18] | 2026–27 AFC champion A | 2026–27 NFC champion N | SoFi Stadium (2) | Inglewood, California (9) | |
LXII | February 2028 (2027) [sb 18] | 2027–28 NFC champion N | 2027–28 AFC champion A | Mercedes-Benz Stadium (2) | Atlanta, Georgia (4) |
Eight franchises have won consecutive Super Bowls, one of which (Pittsburgh) has accomplished it twice:
Although no franchise to date has won three Super Bowls in a row, several have had eras of sustained success, nearly accomplishing a three-peat:
Three franchises have lost consecutive Super Bowls:
The Buffalo Bills have the most consecutive appearances with four from 1990 to 1993. The Miami Dolphins (1971–1973), New England Patriots (2016–2018) and Kansas City Chiefs (2022–2024) are the only other teams to have at least three consecutive appearances. Including those four, 12 teams have at least two consecutive appearances. The Dallas Cowboys are the only team with three separate streaks (1970–1971, 1977–1978, and 1992–1993). The Green Bay Packers, Pittsburgh Steelers, Denver Broncos, [n 1] New England Patriots, and Kansas City Chiefs have each had two separate consecutive appearances. The full listing of teams with consecutive appearances is below in order of first occurrence; winning games are in bold:
The following teams have faced each other more than once in the Super Bowl: [n 2]
AFLa/AFCA team | NFLn/NFCN team |
Pre-merger NFLn team : Post-merger AFCA team [n 5] |
In the sortable table below, franchises are ordered first by number of wins, followed by the total number of appearances, and finally by the total number of points scored for the franchise throughout all appearances. Included in the table are all of the team names that each franchise has had since the 1966 season, a.k.a. the start of the Super Bowl era.
Eight teams have appeared in the Super Bowl without ever winning. In descending order of number of appearances and then years since their last appearance, they are:
Four current teams have never reached the Super Bowl (shown in bold below). Two of them (Jacksonville and Houston) joined the NFL relatively recently, and there are an additional eight teams whose Super Bowl appearance droughts began prior to 2002 (the year Houston joined the NFL). The other two teams that have never appeared in a Super Bowl (Cleveland and Detroit) both held NFL league championships prior to Super Bowl I in the 1966 NFL season. [n 7] Teams are listed below according to the length of their current Super Bowl droughts (as of the end of the 2024 season):