Bayern Munich moved to within one victory of a fourth straight Bundesliga title with a hard-fought 2-0 win over Hertha Berlin at the Olympiastadium
Arturo Vidal and Douglas Costa scored in the second half as Pep Guardiola's side maintained their seven-point lead over Borussia Dortmund - who won 3-0 at Stuttgart - with three matches remaining.
The Chilean found the net soon after the restart with a deflected shot after a difficult first period, before Douglas Costa doubled his side's lead with a stunning long-range strike late on.
Hertha had arguably been the better side in the opening 45 minutes and felt they should have had a penalty after Medhi Benatia seemed to handle the ball inside his own area.
But Vidal's opener swung the momentum Bayern's way and they eventually pulled further clear through Douglas Costa to take the three points back to Munich.
Borussia Dortmund at least kept their title challenge alive for another week with a victory over Stuttgart at the Mercedes-Benz Arena.
Shinji Kagawa opened the scoring midway through the first half, netting his 12th goal of the season when he tapped in a sumptuous Henrikh Mkhitaryan cross.
Dortmund doubled their advantage on the stroke of half-time as 17 year-old Christian Pulisic grabbed his second career goal when he was quickest to react to Mkhitaryan's saved effort.
The Armenian playmaker grabbed a goal of his own early in the second half, casually slamming home the rebound from a parried Adrian Ramos header.
The win extended Dortmund's unbeaten league run in 2016 to 14 games and condemned hosts Stuttgart to their third consecutive defeat to leave them hovering dangerously close to the relegation zone.
With Bayern and Dortmund both certain of their places in next season's Champions League, Bayer Leverkusenmoved a step closer to joining them with a 3-2 win at Schalke.
Trailing 2-0 at half-time through goals from Eric Maxim Choupo-Moting and Leroy Sane, and after Klaas-Jan Huntelaar also had a penalty saved, Leverkusen hit back in the second half at the Arena AufSchalke to open up a five-point advantage over fourth-placed Hertha.
Julian Brandt, Karim Bellarabi and Javier Hernandez turned the game on its head in the space of six second-half minutes to dent Schalke's hopes of catching them.
Anthony Modeste and Marcel Risse were both on target twice in Koln's 4-1 win over Darmstadt, for whom Jerome Gondorf scored a consolation.
Alfredo Morales and Moritz Hartmann put Ingolstadt 2-0 up against Hannover, who were staring relegation in the face until Hiroki Sakai and Hiroshi Kiyotake levelled to keep them in the top flight - albeit only just. They are nine points adrift of the relegation play-off berth with three games of the season to go, with their inferior goal difference effectively condemning them.
The other game saw Augsburg pull five points clear of the relegation zone with their third successive win, a 2-0 triumph at Wolfsburg which leaves the Wolves looking unlikely to qualify for Europe next season.
Alfred Finnbogason and Halil Altintop scored Augsburg's goals at the Volkswagen-Arena.
