The Munster Senior Football Championship, known simply as the Munster Championship and shortened to Munster SFC, is an annual inter-county Gaelic football competition organised by the Munster Council of the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA). It is the highest inter-county Gaelic football competition in the province of Munster, and has been contested every year, bar one, since the 1888 championship.
The final, currently held on the fourth Saturday in June, serves as the culmination of a series of games played during May and June, and the results determine which team receives the Munster Cup. The championship has always been played on a straight knockout basis whereby once a team loses they are eliminated from the championship.
The Munster SFC is an integral part of the wider All-Ireland Senior Football Championship. The winners and runners-up of the Munster SFC, like their counterparts in Connacht, Leinster and Ulster, are rewarded by advancing directly to the All-Ireland group stage. Each of the other defeated teams, depending on their league ranking, advance to the All-Ireland SFC, or to the second-tier Tailteann Cup.
Six teams currently participate in the Munster SFC. The title has been won at least once by all six of the Munster counties, four of which have won the title more than once. Kerry have won the most titles, with 84 in total. Kerry are the three-time title holder, having defeated Clare by 50–23 to 1–13 in the 2024 final.
Following the foundation of the Gaelic Athletic Association in 1884, new rules for Gaelic football and hurling were drawn up and published in the United Irishman newspaper. In 1886, county committees began to be established, with several counties affiliating over the next few years. The GAA ran its inaugural All-Ireland Senior Football Championship in 1887. The decision to establish that first championship was influenced by several factors. Firstly, inter-club contests in 1885 and 1886 were wildly popular and began to draw huge crowds. Clubs started to travel across the country to play against each other and these matches generated intense interest as the newspapers began to speculate which teams might be considered the best in the country. Secondly, although the number of clubs was growing, many were slow to affiliate to the Association, leaving it short of money. Establishing a central championship held the prospect of enticing GAA clubs to process their affiliations, just as the establishment of the FA Cup had done much in the 1870s to promote the development of the Football Association in England. The championships were open to all affiliated clubs who would first compete in county-based competitions, to be run by local county committees. The winners of each county championship would then proceed to represent that county in the All-Ireland series. For the first and only time in its history the All-Ireland Championship used an open draw format. Six teams entered the first championship, however, this number increased to nine in 1888. Because of this, and in an effort to reduce travelling costs, the GAA decided to introduce provincial championships.
The inaugural Munster Championship featured Clare, Cork, Limerick, Tipperary and Waterford. Cork and Tipperary contested the first match on Sunday 27 May 1888, as part of a hurling-football double-header between the counties at Buttevant. Clare defeated Limerick in the first semi-final, however, Limerick were later awarded the game as Clare champions Newmarket-on-Fergus used players from other clubs to supplement their team. Such a format was not yet allowed. The inaugural Munster SFC final between Tipperary and Limerick was to be played on Saturday 10 November 1888, however, no game was played as Tipperary received a walkover from Limerick.
Postponements, disqualifications, objections, withdrawals and walkovers were regular occurrences during the initial years of the championship. Kerry became the sixth and final team to enter the championship in 1889. On Sunday 6 October 1889, the first Munster SFC final took place. Tipperary won their first title on the field of play after a 1–2 to 0–3 defeat of Cork. Since then the championship title has been awarded every year, except in 1921, when the championship was cancelled due to the ongoing Civil War.
The championship has been dominated by Kerry, and to a lesser extent Cork, who have won the title every year since 1936, with the exception of victories by Tipperary in 2020 and Clare in 1992.
Limerick have lost too many Munster SFC finals since 1896, but Waterford have been without a Munster SFC final appearance since 1960.
The first 15 years of the Munster SFC saw the most equitable era in its history with five of the six participating teams claiming the title. Cork led the way by claiming seven titles, closely followed by five for Tipperary, who also became the first team to retain the title. Limerick, Waterford and Kerry all claimed one title apiece during this era. In winning the 1903 Munster SFC final, Kerry claimed the first of a new record of three successive titles and set in train a level of championship dominance that continues to the present day. This record was bested in each of the following decades with Kerry winning four-a-in-a-row between 1912 and 1915, five-in-a-row between 1923 and 1927, six-in-a-row between 1929 and 1934, seven-in-a-row between 1936 and 1942 and eight-in-a-row between 1958 and 1965. The dominance continued with Kerry claiming 20 of the 25 available Munster SFC titles between 1958 and 1982. Since the turn of the 20th century, Cork had claimed titles in almost every decade, including several back-to-back successes, but had never enjoyed a prolonged period of dominance. Cork won the 1987 Munster final, bringing an end to a run of success by a Kerry team that has since come to be regarded as the greatest of all time and securing the first of seven Munster SFC titles over the following nine seasons. For the first time in 100 years, Cork ended the nineties as the "team of the decade" after winning five Munster SFC titles in total. The first two decades of the 21st century has seen Kerry win 15 of a possible 20 Munster SFC titles.
The Munster Senior Football Championship has always been a knockout tournament whereby once a team is defeated they are eliminated from the championship. In the early years the pairings were drawn at random and there was no seeding. Each match was played as a single leg. If a match ended in a draw there was a replay. Drawn replays were settled with extra time; however, if both sides were still level at the end of extra time a second replay took place and so on until a winner was found. Extra-time was eventually adopted in the event of a draw for all championship games except the final.
The dominance of Kerry and, to a lesser extent, Cork led to both these teams being seeded on opposite sides of the championship draw. This was later viewed as a mean of penalising the other "weaker" teams. While it might be possible to beat one of these teams it was deemed near impossible to beat the two strongest teams in the province in a single championship season. This practice was eventually abolished for 1991 with a return to the open draw in advance of the 1992 championship, which eventually saw Clare become the first "non-traditional" champions since 1935. In 2020 Tipperary won a Munster SFC title for the first time since 1935.
The Munster Council abandoned the open draw and returned to a system of seeding both Cork and Kerry on opposite sides before the 2008 championship. After an outcry, the open draw was reinstated in 2009 after just one season of seeding. The policy of seeding Cork and Kerry returned once again in 2013, however, it was abandoned after just one season and the open draw has remained in place ever since.
The Munster SFC has always been an integral part of the All-Ireland Senior Football Championship. Between 1888 and 2000 the Munster final winners automatically qualified for the All-Ireland SFC semi-final. The introduction of the All-Ireland Qualifiers system in 2001 allowed the five defeated teams a second chance of qualifying the All-Ireland SFC, while the Munster SFC champions received a bye to the All-Ireland SFC quarter-final.
Waterford no Munster SFC final since 1960 hold the longest record and weakest team in the province to this day.