The Bundesliga has enlarged the Meisterschale The trophy Bayern Munich will receive is larger than last season's

Bayern Munich have won the 2025/26 Bundesliga: this marks the 35th national title for the Bavarian club. During the final league match, scheduled for May 16 at the Allianz Arena against Köln, the team coached by Vincent Kompany will receive a special Meisterschale, larger than the one awarded last season as the Bundesliga has confirmed that a silver ring has been added to the trophy.

History and design of the Meisterschale

The Meisterschale is a trophy with a circular shape, featuring sixteen turquoise cabochons, five of which are set in gold. It is engraved with the names of all German championship winners from 1903 to the present day, including clubs that won the title before the official founding of the Bundesliga in the 1963/64 season. For this reason, additional rings have been added over the years to accommodate new winners. The first modification took place in the 1981/82 season, followed by a second update in the 2008/09 season.

Following this latest modification, according to an article published on the official Deutsche Fußball Liga website in 2018, the available space on the trophy was sufficient to include all winning clubs up to 2027. However, the trophy was completely dismantled and restored as part of a redesign that increased its diameter to 56 cm and its weight to over 11 kilograms. The redesigned outer ring now features five bands—two more than in the previous version—and all German champions since 1982 have been re-engraved onto this new section. This latest update was carried out by the silverware manufacturer Koch & Bergfeld, which created the necessary space to accommodate the names of future champions over the next thirty years.

Meisterschale trivia

The Meisterschale was designed and created by Professor Elisabeth Treskow at the Kölner Werkschulen in 1949. Since the founding of the Bundesliga (1963/64), only 13 clubs have managed to have their names engraved on it: Bayern Munich (35), Borussia Dortmund (5), Borussia Mönchengladbach (5), Werder Bremen (4), Hamburg (3), Stuttgart (3), Cologne (2), Kaiserslautern (2), 1860 Munich (1), Wolfsburg (1), Eintracht Braunschweig (1), Nuremberg (1), and Bayer Leverkusen (1).

There is also a Meisterschale for the 2. Bundesliga, Germany’s second professional football division: it was introduced in the 2008/09 season and follows a circular design. At the center of the trophy sits a rock crystal weighing 1.2 kilograms, from which a seven-pointed star radiates. Alongside the star’s rays, on seven circular plaques, the names of all 2. Bundesliga champions have been engraved since the 1981/82 season, when the league adopted a single-group format.