Actor Palina Rojinski will be helping to make the draw for the 32 first round ties at the German Football Museum in Dortmund from 22.00 CET (live on ARD). In the two draw bowls with professional and lower league clubs there will be 64 teams including Bayer 04 as well as sixth-tier BSC Hastedt and SV Linx the participants lowest in the league pyramid. DFB president Reinhard Grindel will be in charge of the draw and the presenters are Julia Scharf and Arnd Zeigler.
Bayer 04 are in Pot 1 for the first round draw amongst the pro teams, which means the Werkself will definitely play their first competitive match of next season (17 to 20 August) away to a lower league side – last season it was Karlsruher SC (3-0 a.e.t.). All the matches in the DFB Cup will be shown live on Sky. One match on the Monday night will be live on ARD from 20.45 CET.
FC Heidenheim (Bundesliga 2)
FC Köln (Bundesliga 2)
FC Nürnberg (Bundesliga)
FC Union Berlin (Bundesliga 2)
Arminia Bielefeld (Bundesliga 2)
Bayer 04
Bayern Munich (Bundesliga)
Borussia Dortmund (Bundesliga)
Borussia Mönchengladbach (Bundesliga)
Dynamo Dresden (Bundesliga 2)
Eintracht Frankfurt (Bundesliga, Cup winners)
FC Augsburg (Bundesliga)
FC Ingolstadt (Bundesliga 2)
FC St. Pauli (Bundesliga 2)
Fortuna Düsseldorf (Bundesliga)
FSV Mainz 05 (Bundesliga)
Hamburg SV (Bundesliga 2)
Hannover 96 (Bundesliga)
Hertha BSC (Bundesliga)
Holstein Kiel (Bundesliga 2)
Jahn Regensburg (Bundesliga 2)
MSV Duisburg (Bundesliga 2)
RB Leipzig (Bundesliga)
SC Freiburg (Bundesliga)
Schalke 04 (Bundesliga)
SV Darmstadt (Bundesliga 2)
SV Sandhausen (Bundesliga 2)
TSG Hoffenheim (Bundesliga)
VfB Stuttgart (Bundesliga)
VfL Bochum (Bundesliga 2)
VfL Wolfsburg (Bundesliga)
Werder Bremen (Bundesliga)
CfR Pforzheim (Oberliga, Finalist in Baden Cup)
FC Kaiserslautern (League 3)
FC Lok Stendal (Oberliga, Finalist in Sachsen Anhalt Cup)
FC Magdeburg (Bundesliga 2)
FC Schweinfurt 05 (Bavarian Regional League, Bavaria Cup winners)
BFC Dynamo (Regional League North, Berlin Cup winners)
BSC Hastedt (Oberliga, Bremen Cup winners)
BSG Chemie Leipzig (Oberliga, Saxony Cup winners)
Carl Zeiss Jena (League 3 Thüringen Cup winners)
Eintracht Braunschweig (League 3)
Energie Cottbus (League 3, Brandenburg Cup winners)
FC Erzgebirge Aue (Bundesliga 2)
Hansa Rostock (League 3, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern Cup winners)
Karlsruher SC (League 3)
Rot-Weiß Oberhausen (Regional League West, Lower Rhine Cup winners)
SC Paderborn (Bundesliga 2)
SpVgg Greuther Fürth (Bundesliga 2)
SSV Jeddeloh (Regional League North, Finalists in Lower Saxony Cup)
SSV Ulm (Bavaria Regional League, Württemberg Cup winners)
SV Drochtersen/Assel (Regional League North, Finalists in Lower Saxony Cup)
SV Elversberg 07 (Regional League South West, Saarland Cup winners)
SV Linx (Verbandsliga, South Baden Cup winners)
SV Rödinghausen (Regional League West, play-off winners)
SV Wehen Wiesbaden (League 3)
TSV 1860 München (League 3, Bavarian Amateur champions)
TSV Steinbach (Regional League South West, Hessen Cup winners)
TuS Dassendorf (Oberliga, Hamburg Cup winners)
TuS Erndtebrück (Oberliga, Finalist in Westphalia Cup)
Rot-Weiß Koblenz (Oberliga, Rheinland Cup winners)
Viktoria Köln (Regional League West, Middle Rhine Cup winners)
Weiche Flensburg 08 (Regional League North, Schleswig-Holstein Cup winners)
Wormatia Worms (Regional League South West, Southwest Cup winners)
In the previous game against RB Leipzig in December last year, the Werkself turned came from behind to win 3-1 and further improved Leverkusen's already strong record against the Red Bulls. Montrell Culbreath stood out with his first goal on his debut for the Black and Reds. While the 18-year-old would certainly like to score a second goal against Leipzig on Saturday night, the attack-minded visitors come to the BayArena in confident mood after five Bundesliga victories in a row. The Nordkurve12 supporters group knows the Werkself will therefore once again be reliant on the vociferous support of the fans, and has once again called for the ‘Finally Red’ campaign in the run-in. Today’s matchday news.
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Video games manufacturer Electronic Arts (EA), together with the German Football League (DFL), announced the top male and female selections for the 2025/26 Bundesliga season this week. Bayer 04 striker Vanessa Fudalla is in the starting eleven of the women's "Team of the Season". Alejandro Grimaldo and Aleix Garcia have been selected as bench players in the men's team.
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This special event showed once again how strong Bayer 04 are as a team: As part of ‘BarmeniaGothaer gives joy’, the Werkself players Edmond Tapsoba, Ibrahim Maza and Christian Kofane supported the sale of individually designed T-shirts for a good cause at the Fanwelt on Thursday. Several hundred fans came to take part in the charity campaign. Leverkusen's main sponsor BarmeniaGothaer donated the proceeds to the Fondation Edmond Tapsoba, which helps people in Tapsoba's home country of Burkina Faso in their challenging everyday lives.
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With three games to play before the end of the season, the Bayer 04 Women can break one record and equal another at SGS Essen. After three wins on the bounce, coach Roberto Pätzold's team are aiming to maintain the chance of third place in Sunday’s away game (14:00 CEST, Stadion an der Hafenstraße).
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Rüdiger Vollborn has been at the club for 40 years, he holds the record number of Bundesliga appearances for the club (401) and is the only Bayer 04 player to have won both the UEFA Cup (1988) and the DFB Pokal (1993). And the Berliner stayed with the Werkself after ending his impressive playing career as he worked as a goalkeeping coach for the following nine years. Vollborn now works under the Bayer Cross as a fan liaison officer and club archivist. Since February 2021, the personalised Black and Red lexicon takes Werkself fans under the heading of 'Rudi recounts...' on a brief trip through the history of Bayer 04 every month…
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