Bayern
Dortmund
Leverkusen
Bayern at 94%, and why that isn’t complacency
Bayern didn’t win the 2025-26 Bundesliga so much as lap it. The title was sealed on 19 April with a 4-2 win over Stuttgart, four matches to spare, and the final margin read 89 points to Dortmund’s 73. The number people will still be quoting in a decade is 122 league goals — smashing their own record of 101 from 1971-72, edging past Real Madrid’s 121 in 2011-12, and leaving only Torino’s 125 from a 40-game 1947-48 season above them in top-five-league history. Harry Kane took a third straight Torjägerkanone with 36 goals. Deniz Undav was second on 19. Nobody else cleared 17.
Our model runs 5,000 simulations of 2026-27 and hands Bayern the title 94.0% of the time, with top four at 100.0% and 82 expected points. Their Elo sits at 2000.9 — 166 points above Dortmund, the next-best side. If anything, 94% is the model being polite. Bayern kept Vincent Kompany (contract to 2029), kept the squad that scored 122, and then added Ismael Saibari from PSV for a reported EUR 50-55m on a deal to 2031. Champions who win by 16 points usually coast through the window. This one spent.
The only loose thread in Munich is the one that matters most. Kane’s EUR 65m release clause lapsed on 31 January — Uli Hoeness confirmed it publicly — but his contract runs only to summer 2027, and extension talks are still expected. If something drags Bayern under 94%, it won’t be a rival. It’ll be a contract page.
The real race is 45.9% against 45.0%
Second through fifth is where this league gets interesting, and the tightest call on our whole board is Stuttgart against RB Leipzig for the last Champions League spot: 45.9% top-four for Stuttgart, 45.0% for Leipzig, Elos of 1763.8 and 1761.9, both projected to 57 points. A statistical coin flip. We’ll call the toss anyway: Stuttgart.
Here’s the case. Leipzig’s rating was earned by a team that no longer quite exists. They finished third on 65 points, qualified for the Champions League — and sacked Werner anyway on 17 June, announcing Demichelis five days later on a contract to June 2028. Loïs Openda’s Juventus loan became a permanent ~EUR 40.6m sale once Juve’s top-10 finish triggered the obligation. The reinvestment is sensible — Gladbach captain Rocco Reitz for EUR 21m, Brajan Gruda back on another Brighton loan — but this is a rebuilt attack under a brand-new coach, and Elo can’t see any of it. It just remembers 65 points. Stuttgart, fourth on 62, kept the league’s second-best scorer in Undav (19 goals, 7 assists) and kept their continuity. When the math says coin flip, continuity is our tiebreaker.
Above both, Dortmund at 84.3% top-four (3.5% title, 65 xPts) looks comfortable but is quietly the most date-sensitive number we publish. Niko Kovac stays after the runner-up finish, yet the summer traffic has been outbound: Karim Adeyemi to Barcelona for EUR 22m plus EUR 7-9m in add-ons (Dortmund kept a 35% sell-on), Julian Brandt gone on a free after his deal expired 30 June, Yan Couto loaned to Como with a purchase option. The arrivals are young — Gadou, 19, from Salzburg for EUR 19.5m plus bonuses, left-back Kaua Prates from Cruzeiro — and the whole projection leans on Serhou Guirassy still wearing yellow. His release clause, reported at just under EUR 40m and valid only for a select group of clubs, carries a 15 July expiry; Fenerbahçe, Juventus and Aston Villa have all circled, and Lars Ricken’s “We have no offer for Serhou. We also don’t intend to let him go” is exactly what sporting directors say in both universes. If Guirassy walks, 84.3% goes stale the same day.
Leverkusen third? That’s the number we trust least
On paper the model still ranks Leverkusen best of the rest: 1.6% title, 70.5% top four, 62 expected points, Elo 1804 — clear of Stuttgart and Leipzig. We think that’s a rating haunted by a team that’s leaving the building. Leverkusen finished sixth and missed the Champions League. Kasper Hjulmand lasted nine months — appointed 8 September, out 4 June, 24 wins from 48. The new man is Carles Martínez Novell, ex-Toulouse, on a two-year deal from 1 July, and per Kicker and Sky he got the job after Andoni Iraola and Filipe Luís both said no. Álex Grimaldo has gone to Atlético Madrid for around EUR 20m fixed (add-ons taking it to EUR 23-25m — Leverkusen accepted under their EUR 30m floor because he wouldn’t extend beyond 2027).
The reinvestment is real: EUR 32m on Portugal U21 winger Afonso Moreira from Lyon, signed to 2031. But a club on its third head coach inside twelve months, selling core players under contract pressure, doesn’t feel like a 70.5% top-four side. The market already agrees: Leverkusen’s Elo has shed 33 points in six months, the third-biggest drop in the league. Our suspicion is it has further to fall — and that Elo lag, not Bayern’s 94%, is where this preview is most likely to look smart or silly by Christmas.
The most romantic bottom half in years — and the model is unmoved
The newcomers are a storyteller’s dream. Schalke are back after three years as 2. Bundesliga champions on 70 points, sealed with two games to spare, and they’re keeping Miron Muslic — hired from Plymouth Argyle in 2025, since extended to 2028. Elversberg, from a Saarland town of roughly 13,000 people, beat Preussen Münster 3-0 on the final day (one from Bambase Conte, two from David Mokwa) to steal second on goal difference from Paderborn and become the 59th club in Bundesliga history. Paderborn then won the play-off against Wolfsburg 2-1 on aggregate to return for the first time since 2019-20 — the same tie that relegated Wolfsburg for the first time ever, ending 29 consecutive top-flight seasons since 1997.
The model’s response to all that romance: Schalke go down in 66.7% of simulations, Elversberg in 64.6%, Paderborn in 62.3%. Look at the Elos, though — 1519.7, 1523.4, 1525.4. Six points apart. The ordering is noise; the message isn’t. On average, two of the three go straight back down. The genuinely interesting number is Köln at 35.5%. Wagner took over as interim for the final seven games after Lukas Kwasniok’s sacking, went one win, three draws, three defeats, kept Köln up in 14th, and was rewarded with a permanent deal to 2028. Seven games of survival football is a thin CV, and a one-in-three relegation probability says the model has noticed.
Movers, and what we’ll be graded on
The six-month Elo movers list is a preview in miniature: Frankfurt -60, Werder -50, Leverkusen -33, Union Berlin -30, Dortmund -29, with Augsburg (+30) the lone climber. Frankfurt’s slide is exactly why the Adi Hütter reunion matters — he returns 1 July on a contract to 2029, back at the club he took to a Europa League semi-final in 2018-19, last seen being dismissed by Monaco in October 2025. Union, 30 points down, hand the rebuild to Mauro Lustrinelli, the Swiss title winner from Thun, also from 1 July.
The season starts 28 August — pushed back about a week by the World Cup — and runs to 22 May 2027, with the German window closing 31 August, so the opening matchday kicks off with the market still open. Our calls, on the record: Bayern at 94.0%; Stuttgart edging Leipzig by nine-tenths of a point; Leverkusen’s 70.5% flagged as too generous; two of three promoted clubs down; Köln closer to the trapdoor than their run-in suggested. Every number comes from the same 5,000 simulations you can inspect in the full Bundesliga forecast, stress-test in the what-if lab, and hold against our track record next May.