List of San Francisco 49ers first-round draft picks

The San Francisco 49ers (also written as the San Francisco Forty-Niners)^[4] are a professional American football team based in the San Francisco Bay Area. The 49ers compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the National Football Conference West Division. Since 2014 they have played their home games at Levi's Stadium in Santa Clara, California, located southeast of San Francisco.^[5][6][7] The team, founded in 1944 by Tony Morabito, is named after the prospectors who arrived in Northern California in the 1849 Gold Rush.^[5][8] The 49ers joined the NFL prior to the start of the 1950 NFL season.^[5]

The NFL draft, officially known as the "NFL Annual Player Selection Meeting",^[9][10][11] is an annual event which serves as the league's most common source of player recruitment.^[12] The draft order is determined based on the previous season's standings; the teams with the worst win–loss records receive the earliest picks. Teams that qualified for the NFL playoffs select after non-qualifiers, and their order depends on how far they advanced, using their regular season record as a tie-breaker. The final two selections in the first round are reserved for the Super Bowl runner-up and champion. Draft picks are tradable and players or other picks can be acquired with them.^[13] From 1947 through 1958 the NFL designated the first overall selection as a "bonus" or "lottery pick". The pick was awarded by a random draw and the winner who received the "bonus pick" forfeited its selection in the final round of the draft and became ineligible for future draws. The system was abolished prior to the 1959 NFL draft, as all twelve teams in the league at the time had received a bonus choice.^[14][15]

Since the team's first NFL draft in 1950, the 49ers have selected 87 players in the first round. The team's first-round pick in their inaugural NFL draft was Leo Nomellini, a defensive tackle from the University of Minnesota; he was the 11th overall selection.^[5][16] The 49ers have drafted first overall three times, selecting Harry Babcock in 1953, Dave Parks in 1964, and Alex Smith in 2005.^[17] In the most recent draft, held in 2024, the 49ers chose Florida wide receiver Ricky Pearsall.^[18]

The 49ers did not draft a player in the first round on ten occasions. Nine of the team's first-round picks—Lance Alworth, Jimmy Johnson, Ronnie Lott, Hugh McElhenny, Leo Nomellini, Jerry Rice, Y. A. Tittle, Patrick Willis, and Bryant Young—have been elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame;^[15] one of these, Lance Alworth, chose to sign with the NFL's pre-merger direct competitor, the American Football League (AFL), and never played for the 49ers.^[19][20]