The Pro Bowl is the National Football League's all-star game. It is the final game of the NFL season and is officially called the AFC-NFC Pro Bowl. The game has been played at Aloha Stadium in Honolulu, Hawaii since January 1980.

A postseason All-Star game between the new league champion and a team of professional all-stars was added to the NFL schedule in January 1939, at the end of the 1938 season. In the first game at Wrigley Field in Los Angeles, CA the New York Giants beat a team made up of players from NFL teams and two independent clubs the Los Angeles Bulldogs and the Hollywood Stars. An all-NFL All-Star team provided the opposition over the next four seasons, but the event was cancelled after the game at the close of the 1942 season.

The NFL revived the game in January 1951, after the 1950 pro football season. It was a contest between conference all-star teams: American vs National (1951-53), Eastern vs Western (1954-1970), and AFC vs NFC (since 1971).

After the AFL-NFL Merger of 1970, the name of the NFL's all-star game was changed to the "AFC-NFC Pro Bowl". Since the merger, the head coaches of the teams that lost in the AFC and NFC championship games have been selected as the coaches for the respective Pro Bowl squads — a compromise that arose from the decision to discontinue the Playoff Bowl, which had it been retained, would have matched up the two teams that lost the conference title games.

Currently, players are voted into the Pro Bowl by the coaches, the players themselves, and the fans. Each group's ballots count for one third of the votes. The fans vote online at the NFL's official site, nfl.com. There are also replacements that go to the game should any selected player cannot play due to injuries. Prior to 1995, only the coaches and the players made Pro Bowl selections.

The first Most Valuable Player award in the Pro Bowl was presented in 1951. From 1957 to 1971, two awards were presented to an offensive back and a defensive lineman. In 1972, there were awards for both an offensive player and a defensive player. Since 1973, there's been only one single MVP award.