Joshua Kimmich will lead FC Bayern into the DFB-Pokal final on Saturday against VfB Stuttgart, and Bayern could lift the cup for the first time in six years.
The stakes are unmistakable: Bayern last won the DFB-Pokal in 2019/20 after beating Bayer Leverkusen, and the club have reached the final 25 times, winning the trophy on 20 occasions. Fans have already staked their claim on the weekend—FC Bayern fans sang, "Berlin. Berlin. Wir fahren nach Berlin!"—and Christoph Freund made the objective clear: "Natürlich wollen wir die Saison mit dem Double in Berlin krönen. Wir waren dort lang nicht mehr und deswegen ist das ein ganz, ganz großes Ziel."
That record and the language around it are the reason this final matters now. Bayern’s recent cup history is littered with early exits and shocks: a penalty shootout loss to Holstein Kiel in 2021; a 0-5 quarterfinal defeat to Borussia Mönchengladbach in 2022; quarterfinal elimination by SC Freiburg in 2023; a loss to third-division 1. FC Saarbrücken in 2024; and another quarterfinal exit at the hands of Bayer Leverkusen in 2025. The memory of those nights sharpens the significance of Saturday’s match in Berlin.
There is a gulf between the celebratory tone inside the club and the fragility of its cup record. Uli Hoeneß said simply, "Besser geht’s nicht!" to describe the season. Kimmich himself has offered a different, more measured view: "Von außen betrachtet zählen immer nur die Titel. Wenn man selbst drinsteckt, ist es schon so, dass wir konstant auf einem hohen Level Fußball gespielt haben. […] Ich mache den Erfolg einer Saison nicht an einem Spiel fest – das habe ich vor ein paar Jahren so gemacht. Man sieht auch den Weg dorthin" and he has warned that he is "weit davon entfernt, den Erfolg nur rein an Titeln zu messen." Yet he also used the phrase "brutal enttäuschenden Saison," a reminder that the players feel the pressure of unmet expectations even as the club chases silverware.
The matchup itself offers no simple reassurance. Bayern beat VfB Stuttgart 4-2 in their last meeting mentioned in the sources, but Stuttgart arrive with their own narrative; Vincent Kompany has signalled an independent mindset, saying, "In meiner Motivation spielt das keine Rolle. Nach dem Spiel wird es von allen eine Meinung geben, davon bin ich überzeugt." For Bayern, the DFB-Pokal final is not only a chance to end a six-year drought, it is the opportunity to make the season’s praise for consistency mean something tangible in silver.
Context matters here: Bayern’s last cup triumph came during the 2019/20 Triple season, and the club’s repeated cup exits since then — across 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024 and 2025 — have turned the DFB-Pokal into a recurring test of character. The SPORT1 comparison of this final to the 2018 loss to Eintracht Frankfurt hangs in the background; for a club that has won the competition 20 times, every surprise defeat has amplified the narrative that Bayern can be beaten in knockout football.
Saturday will answer a simple, decisive question: can Bayern translate the season’s domestic form into one clear act of triumph in Berlin and, as Freund put it, crown the campaign with the double? If they do, the six-year wait will end and the season’s internal arguments about what defines success will be settled on the pitch. If they fail, the pattern of cup upsets will have continued—another blemish on a club accustomed to trophies.
For now the picture returns to Kimmich, whose view threads through the season’s contradictions: confident about the process, cautious about reducing success to trophies. Berlin will make his point either way, and for Bayern the final is an obligation to turn words into a 90-minute answer.
