The Kansas City Chiefs lead the Las Vegas Raiders 77 wins to 56, with two ties, across 135 meetings since 1960, and they lead the three playoff meetings 2-1, by The Football Database‘s game log. The Raiders led the series until the 1990s, when the Chiefs went 18-3 against them and took a lead they have stretched ever since. The latest meeting went to Kansas City, 30-27 in Las Vegas on 4 October 2026, AP reported, and the two meet again in Week 18 at Arrowhead.
It is one of the oldest rivalries in the sport, born in the first season of a rival league in 1960. This page covers how a series the Raiders once led by eleven games became one the Chiefs lead by twenty-one.
Who leads, and by how much
Kansas City leads on every all-time count.
Chiefs v Raiders, all-time series (through 4 October 2026)
| Measure | Record |
|---|---|
| Total meetings | 135 |
| All-time series | Chiefs lead 77-56-2 |
| Regular season | Chiefs lead 75-55-2 |
| Postseason | Chiefs lead 2-1 |
| First meeting | 16 September 1960: Texans 34, Raiders 16 |
| Chiefs’ biggest win | 48-9 (2021) |
| Raiders’ biggest win | 41-6 (1968 playoff) |
| Chiefs’ longest winning run | 9 games (2003-2007) |
| Raiders’ longest winning run | 7 games (1975-1978) |
| Current run | Chiefs, 1 game (October 2026) |
Source: The Football Database game log and the Chiefs’ own series timeline. The regular-season figure adds the January 2026 and October 2026 results to the 74-54-2 count Arrowhead Pride published before the 2025 finale. The two have tied twice, both in the 1970s.
The regular season is the ordinary schedule every team plays, and the postseason (the playoffs) is the knockout tournament at the end of it. These two have met three times in the playoffs: the Raiders won in December 1968, and the Chiefs won the AFL Championship Game in January 1970 and a wild-card game in December 1991, by the Chiefs’ own timeline.
How it started: 1960, and a brand-new league
They first played on 16 September 1960, when the Dallas Texans beat the Raiders 34-16 at Kezar Stadium in San Francisco, by the Chiefs’ timeline. The Texans belonged to Lamar Hunt, who founded the American Football League (AFL), the upstart rival to the NFL, after the NFL refused to sell him a team, as ESPN recounts. Hunt moved the Texans to Kansas City in 1963, and they became the Chiefs, by the Pro Football Hall of Fame. The Raiders were founded in Oakland the same year, 1960, as one of the AFL’s original clubs, as Fox News records.
The two have shared a division from that first season, first in the AFL and then, after the AFL and NFL merged in 1970, the AFC West, one of the league’s eight four-team divisions that decide the standings, which I cover on conferences and divisions. That means two guaranteed meetings every season for more than six decades.
Why these two can’t stand each other
The rivalry’s edge comes from the late 1960s, when the two were the AFL’s strongest clubs and kept meeting with a title at stake. In 1968 both finished the regular season 12-2, and the Raiders won the playoff to decide the division 41-6. A year later the Chiefs won the AFL Championship Game 17-7, then beat the Minnesota Vikings 23-7 in Super Bowl IV, by the Chiefs’ timeline.
There is a thread between the two cities that has nothing to do with football. Kansas City’s baseball team, the Athletics, moved to Oakland for the 1968 season, as SABR records, and Kansas City was given a new expansion team, the Royals, in its place, also per SABR. A US sports club can do that, because there is no promotion or relegation and a franchise (a club) can relocate to a new city.
I’m not going to call this the greatest or the fiercest rivalry in the sport, because nobody can prove either. What I can show is that it reversed completely, and that one game in it changed how the NFL treats fouls after the whistle.
The two cities have also drifted apart. The Raiders left Oakland for Los Angeles in 1982, went back to Oakland in 1995 and moved to Las Vegas in 2020, by NFL Football Operations. The rivalry carried on through every move, because the division the two share never changed.
The eras: the rivalry that flipped
Broken down by decade, the series runs in two opposite directions.
Chart source: cumulative series margin (Chiefs wins minus Raiders wins) at the end of each decade, all meetings included. Source: The Football Database, current to 4 October 2026.
The Raiders led for the series’ first thirty years and were eleven games ahead at the end of the 1980s. The 1990s are where it turned: Kansas City won eighteen of the twenty-one meetings that decade, moving from eleven behind to four ahead, and the lead has grown in every decade since.
Chart source: regular-season and playoff meetings, counted in the decade each was played; the two 1970s ties are not shown as wins. Source: The Football Database, current to 4 October 2026.
Chiefs v Raiders, wins by decade (all meetings, including the three playoff games)
| Decade | Chiefs wins | Raiders wins | Chiefs’ running lead |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1960s | 11 | 11 | 0 |
| 1970s | 6 | 12 | -6 |
| 1980s | 7 | 12 | -11 |
| 1990s | 18 | 3 | +4 |
| 2000s | 12 | 8 | +8 |
| 2010s | 13 | 7 | +14 |
| 2020s (to Oct 2026) | 10 | 3 | +21 |
“Running lead” is the Chiefs’ cumulative wins minus the Raiders’ after each decade, and a minus sign means the Raiders were ahead. The two ties, both in the 1970s, are left out of the win columns. Source: The Football Database, current to 4 October 2026.
The 1970 brawl that changed a rule
The best-known game in the series was played in Kansas City on 1 November 1970, and it changed how the NFL enforces fouls committed after the whistle. The Chiefs led 17-14 late in the fourth quarter when quarterback Len Dawson ran for a first down that would have let them run out the clock. As Dawson lay on the ground, Raiders defensive end Ben Davidson speared him, Chiefs receiver Otis Taylor retaliated, and a bench-clearing brawl followed, by the Chiefs’ timeline.
Under the rules of the day, the offsetting penalties wiped out Dawson’s first down. Kansas City had to punt, and George Blanda kicked a 48-yard field goal with eight seconds left to tie the game 17-17, as the Las Vegas Review-Journal records. The tie decided the division: the Raiders won the AFC West at 8-4-2, and the Chiefs finished 7-5-2, by the Chiefs’ timeline.
The league changed how offsetting penalties are enforced soon after, again per the Review-Journal, and in 1976 it also banned the kind of hit Davidson made on a player already on the ground, as NFL.com records. Today’s rulebook covers the 1970 situation in Rule 14, Section 4, Article 9, Item 2, which reads “Dead ball fouls by both teams are offset at the succeeding spot, and the down counts” in the 2026 NFL rulebook.
A dead ball foul is one committed after the play has finished, and “the down counts” means the play itself stands. Under that rule, the two fouls would cancel out and Dawson’s first down would stay, which is exactly what Kansas City lost in 1970. The penalties page explains how enforcement works more generally.
The rivalry has a lighter legend too. The Chiefs’ horse mascot, Warpaint, used to circle the field after every Kansas City touchdown, and after one heavy defeat Raiders coach John Madden reportedly said: “We couldn’t beat the Chiefs, but we damn near killed their horse,” a line recorded on Wikipedia.
When they meet, and what’s at stake
Because they share the AFC West, the two play twice every season, once at each home ground, and that is fixed by how the league builds its schedule rather than left to a draw. The NFL season guide explains how the season is put together, and the conferences and divisions guide is a good starting point too (it’s the one that helped me most at the beginning!).
The prize is usually the division, and between them the two clubs hold seven Super Bowl titles: three for the Raiders, won in Oakland and Los Angeles, and four for the Chiefs (Pro Football Reference).
How the two compare now
The all-time record is history, so here is how the two compared last season in the numbers that describe a team best. I explain each of these, and why point differential is often more honest than a win-loss record, on the NFL Team Stats page.
| 2025 regular season | Kansas City Chiefs | Las Vegas Raiders |
|---|---|---|
| Record | 6-11 | 3-14 |
| Points scored | 362 | 241 |
| Points allowed | 328 | 432 |
| Point differential | +34 | -191 |
Point differential is points scored minus points allowed. Source: ESPN, 2025 regular season.
Kansas City’s record hides how close its season was. The Chiefs went 6-11 and missed the playoffs for the first time since 2014, as Newsweek notes, yet they outscored their opponents by 34 points. Two things explain the gap. They finished 1-9 in one-score games, the worst mark in the league, by Sports Illustrated, and Patrick Mahomes tore his ACL in Week 15, as NBC reported. The advanced stats guide goes a layer further into why a record can mislead.
The Raiders’ record matched their numbers. They went 3-14, were outscored by 191 points, by ESPN’s standings, and finished with the first pick in the draft, as Sports Illustrated records.
The Rivalry in 2026 so far
Both teams came into the first 2026 meeting at 3-0, as theScore noted. Kansas City, with Mahomes back, won 30-27 in Las Vegas to move to 4-0, while Kirk Cousins passed for 365 yards and two touchdowns for the Raiders, AP reported.
The last five meetings
Chiefs v Raiders, last five meetings
| Date | Result |
|---|---|
| 4 October 2026 | Chiefs 30, Raiders 27 |
| 4 January 2026 | Raiders 14, Chiefs 12 |
| 19 October 2025 | Chiefs 31, Raiders 0 |
| 29 November 2024 | Chiefs 19, Raiders 17 |
| 27 October 2024 | Chiefs 27, Raiders 20 |
Source: The Football Database, with the two most recent results from AP and CBS Sports.
The January 2026 finale was the Raiders’ first win over the Chiefs at Allegiant Stadium. With Mahomes injured, Kansas City started Chris Oladokun at quarterback, both kickers made four field goals, and Daniel Carlson won it for the Raiders with a 60-yard field goal with eight seconds left, by the CBS Sports recap. The win also ended the Raiders’ 10-game losing streak that season, AP via KY3 reported.
H2: The next meeting
The two close the regular season against each other for the second year running, this time in Kansas City, by the Chiefs’ schedule release.
| Date | Fixture | Venue |
|---|---|---|
| Week 18, listed for Sunday 10 January 2027 | Raiders at Chiefs | Arrowhead Stadium, Kansas City |
Date as listed by Pro Football Archives; the league confirms Week 18 dates late in the season.
Go to the source
If you want the full record rather than my summary of it, these are the places to go.
- The Football Database: every Chiefs v Raiders game: the complete head-to-head log, score by score
- Chiefs.com: Chiefs v Raiders historical timeline: the club’s own account of the key games, including 1970
- Pro Football Hall of Fame: Chiefs team history: Lamar Hunt, the AFL and the move from Dallas
- NFL Football Operations: Raiders team history: Oakland, Los Angeles and Las Vegas
- The 2026 NFL rulebook: the dead-ball foul rule quoted in the 1970 section
I covered the October 2026 meeting as it happened in the Week 4 review.
Common questions
Who leads the Chiefs-Raiders series?
The Kansas City Chiefs lead the all-time series 77 wins to 56, with two ties, across 135 meetings through 4 October 2026, and they lead the playoff meetings 2-1. The Raiders led the series until the 1990s, when the Chiefs went 18-3 against them, and Kansas City has led ever since.
When do the Chiefs and Raiders next play?
The Chiefs and Raiders next meet in Week 18 of the 2026 season, in early January 2027, at Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City. As AFC West rivals, they are guaranteed to play twice every season, once at each home ground.