How often have the Bears and Packers met in the postseason? The NFL’s oldest rivalry is a rare playoff ‘treat’

The Chicago Bears and Green Bay Packers have been at this for a long time. Their rivalry dates back to 1921 and stands as the most-played head-to-head series in NFL history. By the end of the 2025 season, they had faced each other 212 times. Green Bay holds the edge in the all-time series at 109–97–6, giving the Packers more wins against the Bears than any team has against a single opponent.

And yet, for all that familiarity, January meetings are almost unheard of.

Why Bears and Packers avoid postseason clashes

In more than a century, the Bears and Packers have met in the playoffs just three times. The Bears won the first in a 1941 Western Division playoff, a lopsided 33–14 result. Nearly 70 years passed before the next meeting, when Green Bay beat Chicago 21–14 in the 2010 NFC Championship Game and went on to win Super Bowl XLV. The third comes now: the 2026 Wild Card game.

That scarcity isn’t coincidence. For much of NFL history, playoff fields were small, often limited to division winners. Even when both teams were good enough to qualify, the bracket rarely lined them up. In fact, the Bears and Packers have made the playoffs in the same season only five times across more than 100 years.

As a result, their postseason record sits at a neat and telling 1–1, part of a bigger rivalry story, as summarized here by our friends at Sofascore.

What makes that so striking is how routine their regular-season clashes are. As division rivals, they see each other twice every year. But dominance from September to December hasn’t translated into playoff collisions. In the 2000s and 2010s especially, Green Bay frequently reached the postseason while Chicago stayed home.

That’s why this Wild Card game matters. Familiarity is guaranteed, but rarity raises the stakes. When the Bears and Packers meet in the playoffs, it feels different, heavier, and louder – not because they’re strangers, but because history says they almost never end up here together. For some fans, though, it’s just same old, same old... with bigger stakes.

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