NFL: Overview
Sports · Football · NFL
The NFL
Thirty-two teams, eighteen weeks, and one trophy that spends most of the year in a display case in Seattle. This is the plain version — when the season starts, how the calendar is built, and who is currently holding the thing. Every value stamped with the day I checked it. No odds, no betting content, ever.
The 2026 season
Four things worth knowing before Week 1. Verified 29 August 2026; sources at the foot of the page.
Season opener
Wednesday 9 September 2026, 8:20 p.m. ET
New England at Seattle, Lumen Field. A rematch of Super Bowl LX, seven months on, with the banner going up before kickoff.
Why a Wednesday
First Wednesday opener since 2012
Thursday belongs to Melbourne. San Francisco meet the Los Angeles Rams at the Melbourne Cricket Ground on 10 September — the first NFL regular-season game played in Australia. The league moved its own opening night off the day it has owned for a decade so it could keep that Thursday free to play in a cricket ground eleven thousand miles away.
Regular season
18 weeks, 32 teams, 272 games
Seventeen games each and a single bye week. The 18-week calendar has run since 2021; the extra week is schedule, not football.
Super Bowl LXI
Sunday 14 February 2027, SoFi Stadium
Inglewood, California — the venue’s second Super Bowl in five years, and the first the game has been broadcast by ESPN and ABC.
Reigning champion
Super Bowl LX — Seattle 29, New England 13
Seattle Seahawks
8 February 2026, Levi’s Stadium, Santa Clara
- Seattle’s second title, and the first since the 2013 season.
- Kenneth Walker III took MVP with 135 rushing yards.
- Jason Myers kicked five field goals — a Super Bowl record, and a scoreline that says a great deal about how the evening went for the New England defence and very little about how it went for the New England offence.
Verified 29 August 2026. The title changes hands at most once a year, which makes this the slowest-drifting value on the site — and therefore the one most likely to quietly go stale. It is re-checked every February.
Sources
- NFL.com — 2026 season opener
- NFL.com — Week 1 schedule
- Pro-Football-Reference — Super Bowl LX box score
- SoFi Stadium — Super Bowl LXI
Match results and schedules are facts and are reported here as such. Team names and the marks of the league are used nominatively; no logos, no trophy imagery, no affiliation.