Chicago Bears

From a starch works in Decatur

The club that became the Chicago Bears was founded on 17 September 1920 in Decatur, Illinois, as the Decatur Staleys — a works team paid for by the A. E. Staley starch company and entered into the newly formed American Professional Football Association, which became the NFL. George Halas and Edward Sternaman took control the same year, moved the side to Chicago in 1921 and renamed it the Bears in 1922. Halas remained attached to the club as player, coach and owner across most of the next five decades, and the chain of ownership runs to the present day under George McCaskey.

Home was Wrigley Field from 1921 to 1970, a baseball ground with the pitch wedged awkwardly into the infield, before the club moved to Soldier Field in 1971. The stadium had already been open since 9 October 1924, which makes it the oldest ground in both the NFL and Major League Soccer. The fixture against Green Bay dates back to 1921 and is still the one the calendar bends around; the Bears' all-time win total sits second in the league, behind the Packers.

Nine titles, and the side nobody has matched

Chicago has won nine NFL championships — 1921, 1932, 1933, 1940, 1941, 1943, 1946 and 1963 in the pre-merger era, and Super Bowl XX after the 1985 season. That 1985 team built its reputation on the 46 defence, a front-loaded scheme that was genuinely new at the time and which the rest of the league spent the following decade answering. It remains the reference point for every Bears side since, fairly or not.

The franchise also holds the NFL records for the most players enshrined in the Pro Football Hall of Fame and the most retired jersey numbers, which is the statistical form of a long institutional memory. The practical effect on a modern matchday is that the crowd's standard of comparison is forty years old, and the club does little to discourage that.

Ben Johnson breaks the drought

Ryan Poles, now in his fifth year as general manager, hired Ben Johnson as the 18th head coach in club history on 21 January 2025, prising him away from the offensive coordinator's job in Detroit. The first season under Johnson produced 11-6 and first place in the NFC North, ending a seven-year wait for the division. Caleb Williams broke the club's single-season passing record with 3,942 yards. Safety Kevin Byard and guard Joe Thuney were named first-team All-Pro, and both, with Williams, went to the Pro Bowl.

The season's two signature league wins came against the defending champions Philadelphia, 24-15 on 28 November 2025, and Green Bay, 22-16 in overtime on 20 December. In the wild-card round on 12 January 2026 the Bears trailed Green Bay 21-3 at half-time and won 31-27 — their first play-off victory since 2010. A week later they lost 20-17 in overtime to the Los Angeles Rams in the divisional round, Williams throwing an interception in the extra period.

Where it stands: 3-2, and a quarterback on the mend

The 2026 squad was reshaped rather than topped up. Poles traded the receiver D.J. Moore and a fifth-round pick to Buffalo for a second-rounder, and sent a 2027 fifth to New England for the centre Garrett Bradbury. Safety Coby Bryant arrived from Seattle on three years at $40m and linebacker Devin Bush Jr from Cleveland on three years at $30m, with Neville Gallimore, Kalif Raymond and Cam Lewis added on smaller deals; Byard left for New England and C.J. Gardner-Johnson for Buffalo. The draft went heavy on the back seven and the interior, opening with safety Dillon Thieneman at 25 and centre Logan Jones at 57, then tight end Sam Roush, receiver Zavion Thomas and cornerback Malik Muhammad.

The season opened on 13 September with a 59-37 win at Carolina that involved six rushing touchdowns — the most by the club since 1941 — and the highest points total since a 61-7 win over Green Bay in 1980. It has been uneven since. A 9-3 home defeat by Minnesota on 20 September produced nothing but field goals and a seventh consecutive home loss to the Vikings, and cost Williams a grade-two hamstring strain. Case Keenum then beat Philadelphia 27-7 on 28 September on almost no preparation, going 24 of 34 for 247 yards and two touchdowns, and Tyson Bagent saw out a 23-12 win over the Jets on 4 October.

Then came Lambeau Field on 11 October: a 31-7 defeat, 246 total yards — the fewest under Johnson — and four conversions from fourteen third downs, with Bagent intercepted twice for 87 yards passing before Keenum relieved him. Running back Kyle Monangai, who had gained 146 yards and scored twice the week before, sat out with a toe injury. Johnson said afterwards that the team had been punched in the face, and that when the offence could not find a rhythm he had to look at himself first. Williams, initially given a three-to-four-week timeline, returned to full practice on Thursday 15 October and is listed as questionable for the trip to Atlanta on 18 October; the Bears went 2-1 without him.

A stadium in another state

The club bought the 326-acre Arlington Park racecourse site in February 2023 for $197.2m and reached a tentative agreement with the village of Arlington Heights in November 2024, with president Kevin Warren insisting the build itself would need no state money. That stalled through November 2025 over an $826m infrastructure gap and an unresolved property-tax assessment freeze. An earlier lakefront proposal in Chicago had already been dismissed as a non-starter by Governor J. B. Pritzker's office on public-benefit grounds.

In June 2026 the Bears' board voted to advance the project in Hammond, Indiana, and Indiana passed Senate Bill 27 to create a Northwest Indiana stadium authority and name Hammond as the site, with incentives reported at up to $1bn. By August the club described Hammond as its sole focus, while still owning the Arlington Heights land. On 1 October Pritzker met the NFL commissioner Roger Goodell and the Bears shareholder Pat Ryan in what his office called a productive meeting about keeping the team in Illinois. The target is an indoor stadium opening in 2031, which means Soldier Field hosts Bears football for several seasons yet, whatever the eventual address.

Matchday on the Museum Campus

Soldier Field holds 62,500 for football, down from 66,944 before the 2002-03 rebuild that gutted the interior and dropped a modern bowl inside the old colonnaded shell at a cost of $632m, $432m of it public. The pitch has been Bermuda grass since 2022. The setting — Lake Michigan on one side, the Field Museum and the Shedd Aquarium on the other — is the best thing about the place and also the reason it cannot grow.

Six home dates remain on the 2026 card: New England on Thursday 22 October on Prime Video, Tampa Bay on 8 November, New Orleans on 22 November, Jacksonville on 6 December, Green Bay on Christmas Day on Netflix, and Detroit on 3 January. The Christmas fixture against the Packers is the one the resale market is built around. Week 10 is the bye.