Der Klassiker arrives at Signal Iduna Park on Saturday evening, where second-placed Borussia Dortmund host Bundesliga leaders FC Bayern München with both the title race and prestige on the line. Niko Kovač's BVB have lost just once in the league all season, but Vincent Kompany's Bayern enter with 60 points, 85 Bundesliga goals — a new Bundesliga record at this stage of the campaign — and an eight-point lead at the summit. Win this, and Bayern will all but end the title race with eleven games remaining.
Dortmund's form cuts two different ways heading into the weekend. Their Bundesliga run of 16 matches unbeaten is the longest of any side in Europe's major leagues, built on results such as a 4-0 home victory over Mainz and an away win at Wolfsburg earlier in February. But last Wednesday's Champions League exit at Atalanta exposed deep defensive problems. Sitting on a 2-0 aggregate lead from the first leg, BVB were dismantled 4-1 in Bergamo and eliminated, conceding six goals across their last two European outings. Last Saturday's 2-2 at Leipzig — where they recovered from two goals down to rescue a point — told a similar story, and Kovač heads into the Klassiker knowing his backline needs a significant improvement.
Bayern arrive as the most dangerous away side in the Bundesliga and arguably in Europe. Kompany's team are unbeaten in 20 league road trips this season (W15, D5), a run stretching back over 14 months to their last away Bundesliga defeat in December 2024. Last Saturday they beat Eintracht Frankfurt 3-2 in a match that required a late steadying of nerves after letting a three-goal lead slip, but it still marked their third consecutive league win. Their attacking output — 85 goals in 23 matches, with every Bundesliga game this season producing at least one Bayern strike — makes them the most prolific side in German football by a considerable margin.
These clubs have met 138 times across all competitions, with Bayern holding a 68-33 advantage in wins and 37 draws. In the first Klassiker of 2025-26, played at the Allianz Arena last October, Bayern won 2-1 — the only Bundesliga defeat Dortmund have suffered all season. The prior meeting at Signal Iduna Park, last season's return fixture, ended 1-1. Bayern have won four of the last six encounters across all competitions and have not dropped points away from home in the Bundesliga for more than a year.
My prediction is an away win for Bayern München at 1.60. Six goals conceded in two games heading into this fixture is not the defensive platform required to stop an attack that has averaged 3.7 goals per away Bundesliga outing, and Dortmund's Champions League exit last Wednesday adds psychological weight to the equation. Bayern's 20-game unbeaten away run in the league did not happen by accident, and a team that has already beaten BVB at home this season has the quality to repeat it on the road. The xG projection (1.22–2.36) supports a 1-3 finish.