All Bundesliga Champions since 2000

The Bundesliga is not a single league but has three levels and so we should crown three champions per season

Skip to the end: List of all three champions per season since 2000

Or read the explanation first:

Like many leagues in Europe, Germany’s Bundesliga is not a level playing field.

While the 18 clubs share a common roof for a season, they live on different floors of the Bundesliga house.

1/ On top, the Bayern Level houses Germany’s sole financial super power.

2/ In the middle, the Privilege Level splits into two:

2a/ the Corporate Lounge, whose permanent members are Leverkusen, Wolfsburg, Hoffenheim, Leipzig;

2b/ the Champions League Lounge, whose members can change but often stay the same, such as Dortmund.

3/ On the ground, the Normal Level assembles all the ordinary earners like Gladbach or Freiburg.

Side notes:

1/ On each floor, further divisions exist.

Leverkusen began life as a subsidised corporate entity but is growing into a self-sustaining club representing a genuine local community.

Hoffenheim and Leipzig are fully artificial constructions. Wolfsburg is fluctuating somewhere in the middle.

The ground level knows inequalities, too.

Wealthy benefactors supplied large sums to Schalke and Hamburg, a lot of taxpayer money went into Kaiserslautern, rich cities are able to support their teams more than poorer regions.

Ironically, or perhaps not, semi-privileged yet mis-managed clubs like Schalke, Hamburg or Lautern have squandered their financial advantage.

2/ To identify Champions League clubs, it is useful to consider regularity.

This wikipedia entry lists all German sides in the Champions League:

In my definition, playing in the Champions League for 2 out of 3 seasons qualifies as a regular CL club.

Missing one season but then jumping back to the CL also counts as regular, affecting Bremen 2010 and Dortmund 2016.

After a long spell of CL football, I count the first season afterwards still as a member of the CL elite.

Gladbach (2013, 2016, 2017, 2021) and Stuttgart (2004, 2008, 2010) have not played CL consistently enough to make them privileged.

Three clubs qualify as regular members of the CL elite at some point: Dortmund, Schalke, Bremen.

All members of my Champions League Lounge:

3/ Inequalities have existed since the foundation of the Bundesliga in 1963. But until the early 1990s they had not been as stark and more reversible.

I chose 2000 as an arbitrary, round date to start a new era, coinciding roughly with the transformation of professional football (Bosman, TV money).

As the Bundesliga consists of three levels, it makes sense to crown three champions as well.

I call them:

1/ The B-Champion (B-Meister)

2/ The P-Champion (P-Meister)

3/ The N-Champion (N-Meister)

The B-Champion is first among all levels. Usually this will be Bayern München.

The P-Champion is the best non-Bayern team, decided between privileged and normal members.

The N-Champion is the best at ground level, excluding Bayern and the privileged.

Imagine Freiburg finish first in the common Bundesliga table.

Then Freiburg would be crowned B, P, N champions, a Triple Championship (Triple-Meister).

The Double Championship (Doppelmeister) combines two titles (B+P, or P+N).

All season tables since 2000

Note: !! for Double Championship, !!! for Triple.

All champions since 2000

Summary statistics