Longest Winning Streak in NFL History: Patriots' 21 Straight (2003-04)

The New England Patriots hold the NFL record for the longest winning streak including playoffs, at 21 straight games across the 2003 and 2004 seasons. The run stretched from a Week 2, 2003 loss through the rest of that season, a Super Bowl XXXVIII title, and six more wins to start 2004, and because it was never interrupted by a single loss or tie, it is the standard the record books lead with.

There is a catch that trips people up. The Indianapolis Colts actually won more games in a row, 23, but only counting regular-season games, because a playoff loss fell in the middle of their run. Confusingly, the Patriots also hold the second-longest regular-season-only streak, a separate 21-game run from 2006-08. So the honest answer depends on which record you mean: continuous including playoffs, regular season only, or something else entirely. Here is the full ranked list of both, kept clearly apart.

Longest NFL winning streaks including playoffs

This is the category most sources mean by “the NFL record” — every game counted in order, and one loss or tie anywhere ends it.

Longest regular-season-only winning streaks

This category ignores playoff results entirely, which is why some teams rank much higher here than on the combined list above.

How this list is ranked

Both tables come from official game-by-game logs (Pro Football Reference, cross-checked against Wikipedia’s compiled streak data), counting only wins — ties and losses both end a streak. The “including playoffs” table counts every game in order, regular season or postseason, and breaks on the first loss. The “regular season only” table skips over any playoff games in between, which is why a team can rank higher there even after a postseason loss. Ties are broken by listing the more recent streak first. Data is current through the 2025 season and Super Bowl LX (February 2026).

The Patriots’ 21 and why it tops the combined list

New England’s 2003-04 run began after a September 2003 loss to Buffalo and did not end until a Pittsburgh win in late October 2004. In between came the rest of the 2003 regular season, a full playoff march, a Super Bowl win over Carolina, and a 6-0 start to 2004. Nothing broke it, which is the point: for the all-inclusive record, surviving a full postseason without a loss and carrying it into the next year is worth more than a longer run with a defeat buried in the middle. That is why sources like Pro Football Reference and the NFL’s own record books lead with the 21, not the Colts’ higher regular-season number.

The Colts’ 23 and the regular-season asterisk

Indianapolis won its final nine games of 2008 and its first 14 of 2009, a 23-game regular-season winning streak that stands as a record in its own right. It doesn’t top the combined list because a 2008 playoff loss to San Diego fell right in the middle of that run. So both statements are true, and both are genuine records: the Colts hold the regular-season mark at 23, and the Patriots hold the all-inclusive mark at 21. What makes the Patriots’ streak unusual is that they also hold the second-longest regular-season-only streak, a separate 21-game run bridging the end of 2006 through their 16-0 2007 season and into 2008 — a streak the Super Bowl XLII loss to the Giants didn’t touch, because that loss came in the playoffs, outside the regular-season-only count.

The rest of the field: Packers, Bears, Broncos, 49ers, and more

Behind the top two, six teams are tied for third at 18 games including playoffs. The Chicago Bears did it twice, in 1933-34 and again in 1941-42, both times riding the era’s single-game NFL Championship format. The 1972 Dolphins turned their perfect season into an 18-game streak by winning the 1973 opener. Denver strung together 18 straight from the 1997 postseason through most of 1998 en route to back-to-back Super Bowl titles, and the 1989-90 49ers did the same on their way to a 55-10 Super Bowl XXIV rout. The Packers’ 19-game run is the closest anyone has come to 21: six wins closing out their Super Bowl XLV title run, then 13 more to open 2011, before a Week 15 loss at Kansas City. More recently, the Chiefs (15, 2023-24, capped by Super Bowl LVIII) and the 2004-05 Steelers (15, ended in an AFC title game loss to New England) show even elite modern teams tend to fall short of the all-time mark.

Streaks versus perfect seasons

A long streak is not the same as an undefeated season. Going undefeated means a full year without a loss, which only four teams have managed in the modern era, most famously the 1972 Dolphins at 17-0. A streak can span two separate seasons instead, as the Patriots’ 21, the Colts’ 23, and the Packers’ 19 all do. For the flip side of the best regular-season records in league history, and for how a team can go undefeated in the regular season but still lose in the postseason, see our companion breakdown of going undefeated in the playoffs.

Where the record stands in 2026

No team has approached the Patriots’ 21 since the Packers’ 19 a decade and a half ago. The Denver Broncos put together the NFL’s longest streak of the 2025 season at 11 straight regular-season games (Sept. 29-Dec. 14, 2025), and the Seattle Seahawks capped the 2025 season by beating the Patriots 29-13 in Super Bowl LX on February 8, 2026, extending their own run to as many as 10 straight wins including playoffs before it started. Both are respectable modern runs, but neither is within striking distance of the top 10 on either list above. Franchises with the most Super Bowl wins by team, like the Patriots and Steelers, remain the ones most likely to eventually challenge these marks, since long streaks tend to come from teams already built to win deep into January.

For the flip side of all this winning, our page on the longest losing streak in the NFL covers the teams at the other extreme, where the futility records are just as hard to fathom.

If you would rather test your recall than read the record book, our NFL Wordle game gives you a daily football puzzle built around exactly this kind of team-and-player trivia.

The short version: the Patriots’ 21 consecutive wins in 2003-04 is the NFL’s longest streak including playoffs, the Packers’ 19 (2010-11) is the closest anyone has come, and the Colts’ 23 leads the separate regular-season-only category — knowing which record a source means is the difference between a right answer and a wrong one.