Every era of Packers vs Bears has added its own number to the record book — and Chicago just added a new one that Green Bay won’t enjoy.
A Rivalry Too Big for One Story — So Here Are the Numbers
Some rivalries are best told through a single defining moment. Packers vs Bears is too old, too long, and too statistically dense for that approach to do it justice. This is the NFL’s original rivalry, dating back to when the league itself was barely a year old, and the fairest way to capture it isn’t one narrative — it’s the numbers themselves, each one a small chapter in a story that’s now well over a century long.
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1921: Where It All Began
The very first meeting between these two franchises came on November 27, 1921, when the Chicago Staleys — the Bears’ original name, before George Halas relocated and rebranded the franchise the following year — beat the Packers 20-0. Neither team could have known they were starting the longest-running rivalry in NFL history, one that would eventually outlast both founding coaches, multiple relocations of the league’s headquarters, and the introduction of the Super Bowl itself decades later.
213: The Total Meetings
As of the most recent game in January 2026, these two franchises have played 213 times — more than any other rivalry in NFL history, and a number that grows by at least two every single season since the two teams play twice annually as part of the same division. No other pair of teams in the league comes close to matching this level of sustained, uninterrupted competition across more than a century.
109-98-6: The All-Time Series
Green Bay currently holds the all-time edge, 109 wins to 98 for Chicago, with 6 ties dating back to an era when tied games were still a regular part of the NFL’s rulebook. It’s a remarkably tight margin for a series this long — just 11 games separate the two franchises after more than 100 years and over 200 meetings, a level of parity almost no other rivalry in professional sports has sustained for anywhere near this long.
61-7 and 49-0: The Blowouts
Every long rivalry has its most lopsided chapters, and this one has two extremes that still stand today. Chicago’s 61-7 demolition of Green Bay in 1980 remains the largest margin of victory either side has produced in this series. Green Bay’s own signature blowout came nearly two decades earlier, a 49-0 shutout in 1962 — the same season the Packers won the NFL championship behind one of the most dominant teams in league history.
22: The Combined Championships
Between them, these two franchises have won 22 NFL championships — 13 for Green Bay and 9 for Chicago — the highest and second-highest totals of any franchises in league history. Add in Super Bowl era titles specifically, and the two have combined for five Super Bowl championships, four by Green Bay and one by Chicago. This is, without much argument, the most decorated rivalry the NFL has ever produced, which only adds weight to every individual meeting between them.
77: The Hall of Fame Connection
Combined, the Bears and Packers have sent 77 players to the Pro Football Hall of Fame — 41 from Chicago, 36 from Green Bay — a number that reflects just how much of the NFL’s greatest talent has passed through these two specific franchises across the league’s history. Few rivalries anywhere in professional sports can claim this level of combined enshrined greatness on both sidelines.
11: Green Bay’s Modern Stranglehold
For half a decade, this rivalry stopped looking like a rivalry at all. Green Bay won 11 consecutive meetings against Chicago between 2019 and 2024, the longest winning streak either side has ever produced against the other — a stretch that turned what had been a genuinely competitive century-long series into a near-annual formality. For Bears fans, this stretch represented the low point of the entire rivalry’s history, a run so dominant it began to threaten the very idea that this was still an evenly matched contest.
2: Chicago’s New Streak, and Why It Matters
That 11-game stranglehold is over. Chicago snapped Green Bay’s streak with a Week 16 overtime win during the 2025 season — a result that helped the Bears clinch their first playoff berth since 2020 and end a seven-year NFC North title drought. The two teams met again barely a month later, this time with real stakes: the 2025 NFC Wild Card round, on January 10, 2026, where Chicago won again, 31-27, extending their new streak to two straight and improving the all-time postseason record between these two franchises to 2-1 in Chicago’s favor. For a rivalry that spent five years looking entirely one-sided, two consecutive Bears wins — including a genuine playoff victory — represents the most significant shift in this series’ balance of power in years.
3,942: Caleb Williams’ Piece of History
The 2025 season also produced a smaller but notable individual chapter in Chicago’s side of this rivalry’s broader story. Quarterback Caleb Williams broke the Bears’ single-season passing yardage record, throwing for 3,942 yards to surpass Erik Kramer’s long-standing franchise mark of 3,838. Williams’ emergence, paired with first-year head coach Ben Johnson’s system, is a significant part of why Chicago’s two recent wins over Green Bay feel less like a fluke and more like the beginning of a genuine shift in the rivalry’s momentum.
16 and 8: The Longer History of Streaks
Green Bay’s recent 11-game run, while the longest in the rivalry’s modern era, isn’t actually the longest streak either franchise has produced across the full history of this series when postseason and earlier eras are considered together. Green Bay’s longest sustained stretch of postseason-adjacent dominance reached 16 games at one point in the broader historical record, while Chicago’s own best stretch, an 8-game winning streak from 1985 to 1988, coincided with the Bears’ Super Bowl XX championship season and the peak of the legendary 1985 defense. These older streaks tend to get overshadowed by the more recent 2019-2024 Green Bay run simply because modern fans watched it happen in real time, but they’re a reminder that both franchises have had extended stretches of true dominance over the other at different points across the last century.
24-22 and 31-27: How Close the Recent Games Have Actually Been
It’s worth noting that even during Green Bay’s lopsided streak, many of the individual games remained closer than the win total alone would suggest. Chicago’s January 2025 regular-season win over Green Bay finished 24-22, and the Wild Card playoff win a year later finished 31-27 — both one-score results. This matters for how the rivalry’s recent history should actually be read: Green Bay’s 11-game streak reflected sustained superiority over a period of years, but it wasn’t built on a string of blowouts. Many of those Packers wins came by a possession or less as well, meaning the rivalry’s competitive spirit never fully disappeared even during the years when the final result felt like a foregone conclusion heading into kickoff.
1963: The Championship Season That Still Gets Mentioned
Long-time fans of this rivalry often point to a single regular-season game from November 17, 1963, as the moment that best captures what makes this series different from any other on the schedule. The soon-to-be 11-1-2 Bears beat an 11-2-1 Packers team that day, in a game between two legitimate championship contenders rather than simply two division rivals playing out the schedule — and Chicago went on to win the NFL title that season. Games of that magnitude, between two teams both playing for a championship rather than just divisional pride, have been rare even within this rivalry’s long history, which is part of why the 2025 Wild Card meeting — the first true win-or-go-home postseason game between these two clubs in the Super Bowl era outside of the 2010 NFC Championship — carried some of the same weight longtime observers hadn’t felt from this specific matchup in years.
The Rivalry’s Deeper Roots
Understanding why this specific matchup still carries more weight than almost any other in the NFL requires looking past the numbers to the geography and culture underneath them. Chicago and Green Bay sit close enough, and represent different enough versions of Midwestern identity — a major American city against the smallest market in professional sports — that the rivalry has always carried a cultural dimension beyond the scoreboard. George Halas’s Bears dominated the series’ early decades so thoroughly that it took Green Bay until the 1990s to meaningfully close the gap, a fact that older fans on both sides still bring up whenever the current era’s results get discussed. That kind of century-spanning institutional memory is something no expansion-era rivalry can replicate, no matter how heated a more recent divisional matchup becomes.
Why This Rivalry Still Matters More Than the Records Suggest
Green Bay technically still holds a comfortable all-time edge, and the Packers’ recent five-year stranglehold is a far more significant recent-history data point than Chicago’s two-game response. But rivalries this old aren’t measured purely by who’s currently ahead — they’re measured by whether the games still matter, whether both fanbases still treat the meeting differently than any other game on the schedule, and whether a new generation of players understands they’re stepping into something bigger than a single divisional matchup. By that measure, Packers vs Bears remains exactly what it’s been for over a century: the one game on the schedule that means something different, no matter what else either team’s season looks like.
The Bottom Line
Packers vs Bears doesn’t need an artificial hook to justify its place at the top of NFL rivalry conversations — the numbers do that work on their own. 213 meetings. 109-98-6. Two teams that have combined for 22 championships and 77 Hall of Famers. An 11-game streak that finally ended, replaced by two straight Bears wins that included a genuine playoff victory in January 2026. Whatever chapter comes next in this rivalry, it will simply become the newest entry in a record book that’s been adding entries since 1921 — and shows no sign of slowing down after more than a century of rivalry football.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who leads the all-time Packers vs Bears series? The Green Bay Packers lead the all-time series 109-98-6 across 213 meetings dating back to 1921, making it the most-played rivalry in NFL history.
How many times have the Packers and Bears met in the playoffs? The two teams have met three times in the playoffs, with Chicago holding a 2-1 edge, including a 31-27 Bears win in the 2025 NFC Wild Card round on January 10, 2026.
What is the largest margin of victory in Packers vs Bears history? Chicago’s largest win came in 1980, a 61-7 result. Green Bay’s largest win came in 1962, a 49-0 shutout during the Packers’ championship season.
Did the Packers have a long winning streak against the Bears recently? Yes — Green Bay won 11 consecutive meetings against Chicago between 2019 and 2024, the longest winning streak either team has ever produced in the rivalry’s history, before Chicago snapped it in 2025.
How did the Bears end Green Bay’s winning streak? Chicago beat Green Bay in overtime during Week 16 of the 2025 season, then beat them again in the 2025 NFC Wild Card playoff round in January 2026, giving the Bears back-to-back wins in the rivalry for the first time in years.
How many combined NFL championships do the Packers and Bears have? The two franchises have combined for 22 NFL championships — 13 for Green Bay and 9 for Chicago — the highest and second-highest totals of any franchise in NFL history.
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