Updates

The NFL announced its 18-week, 272-game regular-season schedule for 2026, which kicks off on Wednesday night, September 9, in Seattle and concludes with 16 division games in Week 18 – three on Saturday, January 9, and 13 on Sunday, January 10.

The 2026 NFL schedule, powered by Amazon Web Services (AWS), will feature each team playing 17 regular-season games and three preseason games for the sixth consecutive year. The 17th game will feature teams from opposing conferences that finished in the same standing within their respective divisions the previous season. The NFC will be the home conference for the 17th game in 2026.

See how the opponents were determined for the 2026 season.

The NFL uses AWS to power its schedule-making process. There are approximately a quadrillion possible schedule combinations each NFL season and over 26,000 factors to take into consideration such as stadium availability, travel requirements, primetime games, competitive fairness and division rivalries. The NFL uses AWS to run high performance computing workloads to find the best possible schedule each year. Learn more about creating the schedule.

The NFL’s 107th season begins with the League’s annual primetime kickoff game, as the defending Super Bowl Champion Seattle Seahawks host the New England Patriots at Lumen Field on Wednesday, September 9 (8:20 p.m. ET, NBC) in a rematch of Super Bowl LX. It marks the third Super Bowl rematch played on Kickoff Weekend (Kansas City-Minnesota in 1970, Carolina-Denver in 2016).

On Thursday, September 10 (8:35 p.m. ET, Netflix), the Los Angeles Rams and San Francisco 49ers will meet at Melbourne Cricket Ground, in partnership with the Victorian State Government and Visit Victoria, in the first-ever regular-season NFL game to be played in Australia.

Week 1 continues on Sunday, September 13, with two games between 2025 playoff teams in the 1 p.m. ET window, as the Carolina Panthers host the Chicago Bears (FOX) and the Buffalo Bills visit the Houston Texans (CBS). The late window on Kickoff Weekend presented by YouTube TV is highlighted by divisional matchups. On CBS at 4:25 p.m. ET, Green Bay visits Minnesota in an NFC North showdown while FOX at 4:25 p.m. ET features an NFC East matchup between Washington and Philadelphia.

Later that day, NBC’s Sunday Night Football features Dak Prescott and the Dallas Cowboys visiting Jaxon Dart and the New York Giants (8:20 p.m. ET) in an NFC East showdown. NBC will televise one game each Sunday night in Weeks 1-17, as well as feature Kansas City at Buffalo (8:20 p.m. ET) on Thanksgiving night and one game at 4:30 p.m. ET on Saturday, January 2, from a pool of four designated Week 17 Saturday games.

Kickoff Weekend concludes on Monday, September 14, with ESPN’s Monday Night Football, featuring the Denver Broncos visiting the Kansas City Chiefs (8:15 p.m. ET, ESPN/ABC). ESPN will televise one game each Monday night in Weeks 1-17.

YouTube TV is the presenting sponsor of Kickoff Weekend, inclusive of the entire Wednesday through Monday slate.

Additionally, ESPN/ABC will air two games with playoff implications on the Saturday of Week 18, January 9, at 4:30 p.m. ET and 8 p.m. ET. These games will be selected at the conclusion of Week 17. There will be no Monday night game on the final regular-season weekend (Week 18) to provide more flexibility for the scheduling of the opening weekend of the NFL playoffs.

Thursday Night Football will air exclusively on Prime Video, kicking off its slate in Week 2 with Josh Allen and the Buffalo Bills hosting Jared Goff and the Detroit Lions (8:15 p.m. ET) to open the new Highmark Stadium. Prime Video will broadcast 15 Thursday Night Football games between Weeks 2-17 (excluding Thanksgiving night) and exclusively stream the fourth annual NFL Black Friday game when the Pittsburgh Steelers host the Denver Broncos in Week 12 (3 p.m. ET).

Netflix, along with streaming the first-ever regular-season game played in Australia in Week 1, will stream the first-ever Thanksgiving Eve game when Green Bay visits the Los Angeles Rams on Wednesday, November 25 (8 p.m. ET) in Week 12. Additionally, for the third consecutive season, Netflix will stream two NFL games on Christmas Day in Week 16, as the Green Bay Packers visit the Chicago Bears (1 p.m. ET) and the Denver Broncos host the Buffalo Bills (4:30 p.m. ET).

Peacock will exclusively stream an NFL regular-season game for the fourth consecutive season, with the matchup in primetime on Saturday, January 2, 2027. The game will be selected from the pool of four designated Week 17 Saturday games.

The NFL schedule features nine international games, the most-ever in a season, with five of the games exclusively televised on NFL Network. Along with three games in the UK and returning to Madrid, Mexico City and Munich, the NFL will play the first regular season game in three new cities in 2026 – Melbourne (Australia), Paris (France) and Rio de Janeiro (Brazil). As part of the League’s expansion of the regular season to 17 games, it was determined that, beginning with the 2022 season, teams from the conference whose teams were eligible for a ninth regular-season home game would be among the designated group to play a neutral-site international game each year.

Learn more about the NFL international games.

The international slate begins in Week 1 in Australia with the Los Angeles Rams and San Francisco (8:35 p.m. ET, Netflix) and follows with games in five consecutive weeks, beginning in Week 3 with the first-ever regular-season game in Rio de Janeiro at Maracanã Stadium with the Baltimore Ravens and Dallas Cowboys (Sunday, 4:25 p.m. ET, CBS).

The NFL London Games presented by NetApp begin the following week. The first two weeks at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in London will feature Indianapolis and Washington (Sunday, 9:30 a.m. ET, NFL Network) in Week 4 and Philadelphia and Jacksonville (Sunday, 9:30 a.m. ET, NFL Network) in Week 5. The London action shifts to Wembley Stadium in Week 6, when the Jacksonville Jaguars will play Houston (Sunday, 9:30 a.m. ET, NFL Network).

In Week 7, as the League continues to focus on global growth efforts and expanding the international games slate to more countries around the world, the NFL will play the first-ever regular-season game in France at the Stade de France, the country's national stadium, as New Orleans and Pittsburgh (Sunday, 9:30 a.m. ET, NFL Network) will meet in the NFL Paris Game presented by American Express.

In Week 9, the NFL travels to Madrid, Spain, for the second-consecutive season in a matchup between Atlanta and Cincinnati (Sunday, 9:30 a.m. ET, NFL Network) at the Bernabéu Stadium, home to Real Madrid C.F. The following week, as part of the League’s commitment to playing regular-season games in Germany, the NFL will return to Munich as New England meets Detroit (Sunday, 9:30 a.m. ET, FOX) at the FC Bayern Munich Stadium.

The international schedule will conclude in Week 11 with the first game in Mexico City since 2022 when San Francisco takes on Minnesota (Sunday night, 8:20 p.m. ET, NBC) at Estadio Banorte.

The NFL Thanksgiving Games presented by American Express will feature a tripleheader on Thursday, November 26. The first game will match a pair of NFC North foes, as the Bears travel to Detroit to face the Lions (1 p.m. ET, CBS). At 4:30 p.m. ET on FOX, the Philadelphia Eagles will visit the Dallas Cowboys in an NFC East matchup, followed by Kansas City and Buffalo on NBC (8:20 p.m. ET) to close out the Thanksgiving Day festivities.

The regular season will conclude with Week 18 on Saturday, January 9, and Sunday, January 10. For the 17th consecutive year, all 16 games scheduled for the final week of the season are division contests, enhancing the potential for more games with playoff ramifications.

The NFL’s 32 teams will each play 17 games over 18 weeks. Byes will begin in Week 5 and end in Week 14.

Thirteen games will be Super Bowl rematches and 12 games are rematches from the 2025 playoffs, including Super Bowl LX (New England at Seattle in Week 1) and both Championship Games (Denver at New England in Week 17; the Los Angeles Rams and Seattle in Weeks 16 and 18).

The NFL will continue to use “flexible scheduling” this season to ensure exciting and meaningful games are available for viewing by the largest number of fans. For up-to-date information about “flexible scheduling” for the 2026 season, please visit https://www.nfl.com/schedules/flexible-scheduling-procedures.

As in prior seasons, for Week 18, the final weekend of the season, the scheduling of the Saturday, Sunday afternoon, and Sunday night games are not assigned. In Week 18, three games will be played on Saturday (1 p.m. ET, 4:30 p.m. ET and 8 p.m. ET) with the remainder to be played on Sunday afternoon (1 p.m. ET and 4:25 p.m. ET) and one matchup to be played on Sunday night (8:20 p.m. ET). Specific dates, start times and networks for Week 18 matchups will be determined and announced following the conclusion of Week 17. 

Introduced in 2020 and continuing for a seventh-consecutive year, a total of 14 teams – seven each in the American and National Football Conferences – will make the postseason. The No. 1 seed in each conference will receive a bye in the Wild Card round. The remaining division champions in each conference with the best records will be seeded 2, 3 and 4, followed by the next three teams per conference with the best records seeded 5, 6 and 7. 

Since 1990 – a streak of 36 consecutive seasons – at least four new teams have qualified for the playoffs that missed the postseason the year before.

AFC and NFC Wild Card games will feature the 2 seed hosting the 7 seed, the 3 seed hosting the 6 seed and the 4 seed hosting the 5 seed.

Wild Card Weekend powered by Verizon for the 2026 season will feature six games, starting on Saturday, January 16. 

Wild Card winners join the top seeds in each conference in the Divisional Playoffs, on Saturday and Sunday, January 23-24. The AFC and NFC Championship Games will be played on Sunday, January 31. The winners meet two weeks later on Sunday, February 14, in Super Bowl LXI at SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles, California (ESPN), marking the ninth time the League’s final game will be played in Los Angeles.

The NFL is the only sports league that presents all regular-season and postseason games on free, over-the-air television in local markets. All postseason games are distributed nationally.

Westwood One will broadcast NFL primetime games on radio and digital, including the three Thanksgiving Day games, international games, and the entire NFL playoffs. SiriusXM subscribers will have access to every live NFL game, as well as exclusive 24/7 talk channel coverage on SXM NFL Radio. All live and local prime time games will be available to stream on mobile devices with NFL+.