The Kansas City Chiefs are a professional American football team based in Kansas City, Missouri. The Chiefs compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's American Football Conference (AFC) West division.

The team was founded in 1959 as the Dallas Texans by businessman Lamar Hunt, and was a charter member of the American Football League (AFL).[10] In spring 1963, the team relocated to Kansas City,[11][12] and assumed its current name.[13][14] The Chiefs joined the NFL as a result of the merger in 1970, and the team is valued at over $3.7 billion.[5] Hunt's son, Clark Hunt, serves as chairman and CEO. While the elder Hunt's ownership stakes passed to his widow and children after his death in 2006, Clark is the operating head of the franchise; he represents the Chiefs at all league meetings, and has ultimate authority on personnel changes.

The Chiefs won three AFL championships, in 1962, 1966, and 1969,[15][16] and were the second AFL team (after the New York Jets) to defeat an NFL team in an AFL–NFL World Championship Game, when they defeated the Minnesota Vikings in Super Bowl IV. That victory on January 11, 1970, was the final game before the leagues' merger went into full effect. The Chiefs were also the second team, after the Green Bay Packers (whom they played in Super Bowl I), to appear in more than one Super Bowl (and the first AFL team to do so) as well as the first to appear in the championship game in two different decades. Despite post-season success early in the franchise's history, winning five of their first six postseason games, the team struggled to find success in the playoffs for decades, including losing ten of eleven playoff games from 1993 to 2017, which included an eight-game losing streak. Since then, the Chiefs have won eight of their last eleven playoff games, including Super Bowl LIV in 2020 over the San Francisco 49ers, which earned the franchise their first championship in fifty years.[17] In February 2021, the team made it to Super Bowl LV, but lost to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers