The San Francisco 49ers are a professional American football team based in the San Francisco Bay Area . They compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a league member of the National Football Conference (NFC) Western Division . The team plays its home games at Levy Stadium in Santa Clara, California , located 38 miles (61 km) southeast of San Francisco in the heart of Silicon Valley . Since 1988, the 49ers have been headquartered in Santa Clara .
The team was founded in 1946 as a founding member of the All-American Football Conference (AAFC) and joined the NFL in 1949 when the leagues merged. The 49ers were the first major league professional sports franchise based in San Francisco and are the 10th oldest franchise in the NFL. The name “49ers” comes from the prospectors who arrived in Northern California in the 1849 Gold Rush . The team is legally and corporately registered as the San Francisco Forty Niners .
The team started play at Kezar Stadium in San Francisco before moving across town to the Candlestick in 1971 and then to Levy Stadiumin Santa Clara in 2014.
The 49ers won five Super Bowl championships between 1981 and 1994. Four of them came in the 1980s and were led by Hall of Famers Joe Montana , Jerry Rice , Ronnie Lott , Steve Young , Charles Haley, Fred Dean, and coaches Bill Walsh and George Seifert .They have played in 7 Super Bowls, which ranks 3rd all-time in the NFL. They were 20 division champions between 1970 and 2019, making them one of the most successful teams in NFL history. 49ers rank 4th in all-time playoffs (32) and have been in the league playoffs27 times: 26 times in the NFL and once in the AAFC. They have also played in the most NFC Championship games (16), hosting 10 of them, which is also an NFC record.
