The NFL will play on six days of the week in 2026, the second time it has done so in the last three years.Of the 272 regular-season games, 223 are scheduled on a Sunday. The 2026 slate also includes two Wednesday games (kickoff and the day before Thanksgiving), four Friday games (Black Friday and Christmas) and seven Saturday games (two the week before Christmas, plus TBD matchups in the final three weeks of the season). The league will play 17 games on Mondays and 19 on Thursdays, two of its more traditional prime-time windows.The season kicks off on a Wednesday in a rematch of last season's Super Bowl. The last time the NFL began the season on a day other than Thursday was in 2012, when it moved kickoff to Wednesday to avoid overlap with then-president Barack Obama's speech at the Democratic National Convention. Since then, the league has hosted three more Wednesday games: two on Christmas in 2024 and one rescheduled matchup in 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic.This year's Wednesday kickoff is due to scheduling hurdles and Labor Day falling on the latest possible day on the calendar. The Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961 prohibits NFL games from being played on any Friday or Saturday from the second Friday in September through the second Saturday in December to prevent direct competition with high school and college football games. The NFL usually begins its season the weekend after Labor Day.Biggest matchups on the 2026 NFL calendarJourdan RodrigueFor the past two years, Labor Day fell early enough on the calendar that the NFL could host opening-week international games on Fridays and avoid the SBA blackout period. With Labor Day on Sept. 7 this year, the NFL is unable to host a Friday Week 1 game, pushing the New England Patriots at Seattle Seahawks season opener to Wednesday and the San Francisco 49ers-Los Angeles Rams game in Melbourne, Australia, to Thursday in the United States (the game kicks off on Friday morning in Australia).The NFL is also experimenting with a new window this year in having the Rams host the Green Bay Packers the day before Thanksgiving.In recent years, the NFL experimented with Monday night doubleheaders, some of which were staggered apart while others aired concurrently. In March, NFL executive vice president of media distribution Hans Schroeder said the league was pulling back on the experiment but would continue exploring other unconventional time slots, like Thanksgiving Eve.The teams with the most games scheduled on days other than Sunday are the Seahawks, Rams, Buffalo Bills and Chicago Bears, with six each. Conversely, five teams are scheduled only on Sundays, including the Miami Dolphins, New York Jets, Tennessee Titans, Las Vegas Raiders and Arizona Cardinals.The regular season begins on Sept. 9 and ends on Jan. 10, 2027.The playoff wild-card round is Jan. 16-18, 2027, followed by the divisional round on Jan. 23-24, 2027. Conference championships are scheduled for Jan. 31, 2027.Super Bowl LXI is scheduled for Feb. 14, 2027, at SoFi Stadium. The Valentine's Day finale is the latest end to a season in NFL history, a result of the 2021 schedule expansion and late Labor Day.