What Is the Lombardi Trophy? (Super Bowl Prize Explained)

The Vince Lombardi Trophy is the prize handed to the Super Bowl champion at the end of every NFL season. It is a sterling silver sculpture of a regulation football standing on end, and it is the single object every team in the league spends a year chasing.

What sets it apart from most trophies is a small detail with big meaning: the winner keeps it forever. There is no engraving of past champions on one shared cup that gets passed to the next winner. Tiffany & Co. builds a new one from scratch each year, so the trophy a team lifts in February is theirs to hold onto for good.

What the Lombardi Trophy is made of

The trophy is a football, roughly life-size, frozen in kicking position on top of a three-sided pyramid base. It is made of sterling silver, stands about 22 inches tall, and weighs close to seven pounds. Tiffany & Co. has handmade every one since the first Super Bowl, working the silver by hand rather than casting it in a mold, which takes skilled silversmiths several months per trophy.

The words “Vince Lombardi Trophy” are engraved on the base, along with the Super Bowl number in Roman numerals and the date. The names of the two teams and the final score are added after the game. There is no gold anywhere on it, which surprises people who assume a championship trophy must be gilded. Its worth is in what it represents, not the metal.

Why it is named after Vince Lombardi

Vince Lombardi coached the Green Bay Packers through the 1960s and won the first two Super Bowls, after the 1966 and 1967 seasons, before those games were even called Super Bowls. He had already won three NFL titles in the pre-merger era, and his name became shorthand for winning in professional football.

The trophy was originally just the “World Championship Game Trophy.” Lombardi died of cancer in September 1970, and the NFL renamed the award in his honor for the following season. So the man the trophy is named for only ever coached teams that won it, then had it named after him within months of his death. Green Bay’s stretch of dominance is why the Packers still hold a special place in Super Bowl history despite playing in the league’s smallest market.

Which teams have won the most Lombardi Trophies

Because a new trophy is minted every year and never shared, counting Lombardi Trophies is the same as counting Super Bowl titles. The table below shows the franchises with the most, current through Super Bowl LIX in February 2025, when the Philadelphia Eagles beat the Kansas City Chiefs.

Team	Lombardi Trophies	First title	Most recent
Pittsburgh Steelers	6	1974 season	2008 season
New England Patriots	6	2001 season	2018 season
San Francisco 49ers	5	1981 season	1994 season
Dallas Cowboys	5	1971 season	1995 season
Kansas City Chiefs	4	1969 season	2023 season
Green Bay Packers	4	1966 season	2010 season
New York Giants	4	1986 season	2011 season

The Steelers and Patriots sit clear at the top with six trophies apiece. Pittsburgh built four of theirs in the 1970s; New England won all six this century with Tom Brady at quarterback. For the full franchise-by-franchise picture, including wins versus appearances, see our breakdown of which NFL team has the most Super Bowl wins.

How the trophy is awarded

The commissioner presents the Lombardi Trophy on a stage rolled onto the field within minutes of the final whistle. The winning owner receives it first, then it moves through the coach and the players as the confetti drops. The Super Bowl Most Valuable Player is named at the same ceremony, though the MVP gets a separate award and, often, a truck.

The losing team walks off with nothing new. The two conference champions each collect a trophy the week before, the AFC’s Lamar Hunt Trophy and the NFC’s George Halas Trophy, for winning their conference title games. Those get you into the Super Bowl; only the Lombardi says you won it.

What the trophy means to a franchise

For most owners, a Lombardi is the endpoint of decades of spending, drafting, and near-misses. Thirteen of the league’s 32 teams have never won one, and four have never even reached the game. That scarcity is the whole point. A club can be worth billions, sell out every home game, and still have an empty trophy case, which is why chasing the Lombardi drives nearly every roster and coaching decision in the sport.

If you want to test how well you know the players who have lifted it, try our Guess the NFL Player game, then see how the game’s greatest passers stack up in the most Super Bowl wins by a quarterback. Six trophies is the number to beat, and only two franchises have ever gotten there.