List of Every Stanley Cup Winner by Year

The Carolina Hurricanes are the reigning Stanley Cup champions, beating the Vegas Golden Knights 4-2 in the 2026 Final. In the NHL era — 1917-18 through 2025-26 — the Cup has been awarded 107 times across 109 seasons, and the Montreal Canadiens have won it more than anyone.

The full table is below: every season, the champion, the team it beat in the Final, the series result, and the Conn Smythe Trophy winner from 1965 on. Underneath it you'll find the pre-NHL "challenge era" champions from 1893, the two seasons nobody won, and the stretches that defined the trophy.

At a Glance

A quick vocabulary note for new viewers: the Stanley Cup Final is the last of four best-of-seven playoff rounds, so a "4-2" in the table below means the winner took the series four games to two. The Conn Smythe Trophy goes to the most valuable player of the entire playoffs, not just the Final — which is why it sometimes goes to a player on the losing team. For how teams get to the Final in the first place, see NHL Playoff Format Explained - How Teams Qualify and Seed.

Every Stanley Cup Winner, 1917-18 to 2025-26

Team names are given as they were used at the time. Toronto's franchise won as the Arenas (1918) and the St. Patricks (1922) before becoming the Maple Leafs in 1927. Chicago spelled its name "Black Hawks" until 1986. Anaheim won as the Mighty Ducks' successor after dropping "Mighty" in 2006.

Before the NHL: the Challenge Era, 1893-1917

The Stanley Cup did not start as an NHL trophy, and for its first 25 years it did not belong to any single league. Lord Stanley of Preston, then Governor General of Canada, donated it in 1892 as a challenge trophy for Canada's top amateur club. A team won it by finishing first in its league, and then had to defend it against challengers approved by two independent trustees — sometimes several times in one winter, sometimes in the middle of a season.

That is why these years are counted separately from the NHL list. There was no single playoff bracket, the Cup could change hands more than once in a calendar year, and the clubs came from leagues that no longer exist. Below is the team recognized as holding the Cup at the end of each year.

From 1915 to 1917 the Cup settled into an annual East-versus-West series between the NHA and the Pacific Coast Hockey Association. The NHA folded in 1917 and the NHL replaced it, which is where the modern list starts. Between 1918 and 1926 the NHL champion still had to beat a Western league champion to win the Cup; only from 1926-27 onward has the Cup gone automatically to the NHL playoff winner.

The Seasons With No Champion

Despite what you'll sometimes read, the Cup has gone unawarded exactly twice since 1893 — not three or four times.

1918-19. The Montreal Canadiens and the PCHA champion Seattle Metropolitans were level at two wins each with one tie when the Spanish flu tore through both rosters. Game 6 was called off, the series was abandoned with no winner, and Canadiens defenceman Joe Hall died of pneumonia days later. The Cup was never awarded for that season.

2004-05. A labour dispute between the league and the NHL Players' Association wiped out the entire season. It remains the only time a North American major league has cancelled a full season over a lockout, and the only time the Cup went unawarded for a reason unrelated to illness.

Three other seasons are commonly but wrongly added to that list. The 1994-95 and 2012-13 lockouts shortened seasons to 48 games, but both produced champions (New Jersey and Chicago). And the 2019-20 season was paused in March 2020 by the COVID-19 pandemic, then finished in sealed "bubbles" in Toronto and Edmonton, with Tampa Bay lifting the Cup in September. The trophy itself carries the record of both blank years: the bands are engraved with "1919 — Series Not Completed" and "2005 — Season Not Played."

Montreal's Five Straight, 1956-60

No franchise has come close to what the Canadiens did in the second half of the 1950s. Montreal won five consecutive Stanley Cups — 1956, 1957, 1958, 1959 and 1960 — which is still the record, and did it in a six-team league where the same handful of clubs met over and over.

The core was Maurice "Rocket" Richard, his brother Henri, Jean Béliveau, Doug Harvey, Bernie Geoffrion and goaltender Jacques Plante, coached by Toe Blake. They were so effective on the power play — the man advantage a team gets when an opponent is penalized — that the NHL changed the rule because of them. Before 1956, a minor penalty ran its full two minutes no matter how many goals were scored; Montreal scored two or three on a single penalty often enough that the league rewrote the rule to end a minor penalty as soon as the team with the advantage scores. That rule is still in force today, and it exists mostly because of this team. (More on how penalties work in NHL Penalty Rules - Minor, Major, Misconduct and Match, Explained.)

Zoom out and the run looks even stranger. From 1956 through 1979, Montreal won 15 of 24 Stanley Cups. The Canadiens have not won since 1993 — but the 24 banners are not going anywhere. See Which NHL Teams Have Won the Most Stanley Cups? for the full franchise tally.

The Parity Era: 1994 Through 2026

The list changes character in the mid-1990s. In the 32 seasons played from 1993-94 through 2025-26, 16 different franchises won the Cup — half the league. No team has won three in a row since the New York Islanders' four straight from 1980 to 1983. The most any franchise has managed in that span is four (Detroit: 1997, 1998, 2002, 2008).

Back-to-back wins still happen — Pittsburgh (1991-92 and 2016-17), Detroit (1997-98), Tampa Bay (2020-21) and Florida (2024-25) all repeated — but three-peats have vanished. The main reason is structural. The NHL introduced a hard salary cap in 2005-06 after the lockout, and unlike the NBA's soft cap there are no exceptions that let a team simply pay to keep a finished roster together. Champions lose depth players to free agency every July. Add a 16-team playoff field, four best-of-seven rounds, and goaltending that can swing a series in either direction, and long dynasties become very hard to build.

The other marker of the era is geography. Of those 16 champions, 11 are U.S.-based franchises founded after 1967. No Canadian team has won the Cup since Montreal in 1993 — a 32-season stretch that includes seven Canadian trips to the Final, most recently Edmonton's back-to-back losses to Florida in 2024 and 2025.

Carolina's 2026 Cup

The Hurricanes won their second Stanley Cup in June 2026, closing out Vegas 3-0 in Game 6 on June 14 to take the series 4-2. Their first came in 2006, also in a Game 7-length grind, against Edmonton.

The story of the series was Rod Brind'Amour. He captained Carolina's 2006 champions and lifted the Cup himself; 20 years later he coached the franchise to another one — the first person to win the Stanley Cup as a player and later as head coach for the same team since Toe Blake did it with Montreal in 1956.

Carolina's captain, 37-year-old Jordan Staal, won the Conn Smythe Trophy and became the oldest player ever to do so. He had won a Cup with Pittsburgh in 2009 as a 20-year-old. The full award list is at Every Conn Smythe Trophy Winner in NHL History.

This page is updated each June, after the Stanley Cup Final ends.

FAQ

Who won the Stanley Cup in 2026? The Carolina Hurricanes, who beat the Vegas Golden Knights 4-2 in the Final. It was Carolina's second championship, after 2006, and Jordan Staal won the Conn Smythe Trophy as playoff MVP.

Which team has won the most Stanley Cups? The Montreal Canadiens, with 24 — 23 of them in the NHL era plus one in 1916, when the Cup was still contested between rival leagues. Toronto is second with 13 and Detroit third with 11.

How many years was the Stanley Cup not awarded? Two: 1919, when the Final between Montreal and Seattle was abandoned during the Spanish flu pandemic, and 2005, when the entire NHL season was cancelled by a lockout.

Why does the list start in 1918 for the NHL? The NHL was founded in November 1917, so 1917-18 was its first season. The Cup existed for 25 years before that as a challenge trophy open to clubs from several leagues, which is why those years are listed separately.

Has a losing team's player ever won the Conn Smythe Trophy? Yes, five times: Roger Crozier (1966), Glenn Hall (1968), Reggie Leach (1976), Ron Hextall (1987) and Jean-Sébastien Giguère (2003). The award goes to the best player of the whole playoffs, whichever team he plays for.

When did a Canadian team last win the Cup? Montreal in 1993. Canadian franchises have reached the Final several times since — Vancouver in 1994 and 2011, Calgary in 2004, Edmonton in 2006, 2024 and 2025, Ottawa in 2007, Montreal in 2021 — without winning.

What happens to the Cup after a team wins it? It stays with the champion until the following season and every player, coach and staff member gets a personal day with it. The rules around that are covered in Who Keeps the Stanley Cup After the Final - The Trophy's Rules, Explained.

How does the Stanley Cup list compare to other leagues? The Cup is far older than its counterparts — see List of Every NBA Champion by Year and List of Every Super Bowl Winner by Year for the same treatment of basketball and football.