From a TV perspective, the NFL is coming off a record-breaking 2025 season:
• The Thanksgiving game between the Kansas City Chiefs and Dallas Cowboys was the most-watched regular-season game ever, with more than 57 million viewers.
The Chiefs have dominated the top of the national TV ratings rankings in the Patrick Mahomes era, and presuming he’s healthy and playing after his knee injury and offseason recovery, the Chiefs’ slots on the national TV schedule will continue to loom among the top audience drivers (as you will notice below).
• The NFL averaged 18.7 million viewers across the season, the highest since 1989 (and up 10 percent over 2024).
• Of the top 100 most-watched TV programs of 2025, the NFL accounted for 89 of them.
• The Saturday night wild-card game between the Chicago Bears and Green Bay Packers was the most-streamed NFL game ever, topping multiple streaming records set throughout the season.
To be sure, the X-factor behind all those numbers — along with every enthusiastically promoted sports-TV audience number you have seen over the past year — is that Nielsen adjusted its industry-standard measurement formula to (more accurately) include digital and “out of home” viewing. The TV equivalent of a rising tide seemingly lifted audience numbers for nearly every sports broadcast out there, including the NFL; the follow-up to that is whether games this season exceed last year’s numbers, stay flat or maybe even decline a bit. However, based on last year, the biggest games will be gigantic audience drivers, with holidays (does “NFL Week 1” count?), prime time and even a few regular ol’ Sunday afternoons leading the way.
With that in mind and the 2026 NFL schedule now officially released, let’s look at some of the most interesting contenders for the biggest national TV draws of the season.
Thanksgiving: The feast
Chicago Bears at Detroit Lions (1 p.m. ET, CBS)
Philadelphia Eagles at Dallas Cowboys (4:30 p.m. ET, Fox)
Kansas City Chiefs at Buffalo Bills (8:20 p.m. ET, NBC)
Thursday, Nov. 26
It wasn’t just Chiefs-Cowboys that drew a superlative audience last year; Packers-Lions was the second-most-watched game of the season. In short, Thanksgiving is the perennial TV monster. In 2026, the NFL could not have designed a more ideal tripleheader to engage in ratings-maxxing.
Bears-Lions is one of the league’s best rivalries. The Cowboys are, on their own, one of the league’s biggest TV draws, but pairing Dallas with the Eagles is a classic loathe-watch for the tens of millions of fans who can’t stand either team (but tune in en masse to watch both). In the Chiefs-Bills nightcap, as long as Mahomes is playing, the prime-time matchup between him and Josh Allen would be my top pick to be the NFL’s most-watched regular-season game of 2026.
But over the past few seasons, the NFL has redefined the boundaries of pro football on Thanksgiving in two meaningful ways:
First, by adding the Black Friday game, which launched in 2023. Last year, the Bears-Eagles game on Amazon Prime Video was watched by an average of 16.3 million people, qualifying it as blockbuster sports TV the day after Thanksgiving. In 2026, the game features the Denver Broncos vs. the Pittsburgh Steelers (3 p.m. ET, Prime Video).
• New for 2026 is a “Thanksgiving Eve” matchup, a Wednesday night game airing at 8 p.m. ET on Netflix to help make your local high school reunion a little less awkward. Given the high-profile matchup (Packers vs. Los Angeles Rams) and the fact that the Thanksgiving window is wildly popular with fans, this “first-ever” Wednesday game could top Netflix’s Christmas audience average of 23.7 million last season.
The Super Bowl rematch
New England Patriots at Seattle Seahawks (Week 1)
Wednesday, Sept. 9
8:20 p.m. ET, NBC
Last season’s Week 2 Super Bowl rematch between the Chiefs and Eagles was the third-most-watched game of the regular season and drew the biggest audience other than Thanksgiving. The Chiefs are the league’s top TV draw, and the Eagles are not far behind — beyond the fact that it was a dramatic game, that is a big reason the Super Bowl between the two set a record for the most-watched Super Bowl ever. The Seahawks and Patriots didn’t match that high last February, but they did deliver the second-most-watched Super Bowl despite a lackluster game.
In short, “Super Bowl rematch” drives attention, and “NFL season opener” also regularly performs exceptionally well. Making this one even more interesting, it will be only the second time (2012) the league opens the season on a Wednesday night. Between the names on the marquee, the novelty of the night and the pent-up anticipation, expect a huge audience.
The newest Netflix experiment
Los Angeles Rams vs. San Francisco 49ers in Melbourne, Australia (Week 1)
Thursday, Sept. 10
8:35 p.m. ET, Netflix
The past two Christmas Days, Netflix proved it can deliver an audience on a nontraditional NFL TV platform (Beyoncé helped). That was despite some grumbling about how to find the game or the extra costs required to access it. By now, it is well established that the NFL has games on Netflix, and fans have tuned in.
True to its strategy to “eventize” everything, Netflix and the NFL naturally selected an early-season, weeknight TV window the streaming network will have to itself. Thursday of Week 1 is also the traditional night the league airs its season opener, so natural awareness will be high. (Now, about that $8.99 charge to access it …)
That the Week 1 game will feature the Rams — the current odds-on Super Bowl favorite led by the reigning NFL MVP, quarterback Matthew Stafford — will help with interest. But the inherent fan interest in the NFL’s opening week will have people’s attention. The open question is whether Netflix’s NFL ambitions are bona fide enough to drive big audience numbers outside of Christmas.
(Speaking of Christmas, looking for a strong contender to end up among the top five most-watched regular-season games for the 2026 season? I have my eye on Fox on Christmas night. Prime Video delivered 21 million viewers on Christmas night last year. Imagine what the Fox NFL juggernaut will do with a matchup between the Seahawks and Rams in prime time to wrap up a Christmas Day tripleheader.)
Sunday night: The people’s champ
Kansas City Chiefs at Seattle Seahawks (Week 7)
Sunday, Oct. 25
8:20 p.m. ET, NBC
NBC’s “Sunday Night Football” has been America’s most-watched prime-time TV program for 15 straight years. That isn’t changing this season. With new analyst Mike Tomlin chiming in from the studio show, the only question is which of the Sunday matchups will draw the most attention. (Keep in mind the NFL retains the right to “flex” in better matchups as the season progresses, based on injuries or the state of the standings.) I’ll put a marker down on Chiefs at Seahawks in Week 7 — the audience juggernaut versus the defending champs, in front of one of the most telegenic home crowds in the league. (Also receiving consideration: Cowboys at New York Giants in Week 1; Bills at Packers in Week 14; any potential flexes late in the season.)
Monday night: The Super Bowl 61 warm-up
New England Patriots at Kansas City Chiefs (Week 15)
Monday, Dec. 21
8:15 p.m. ET, ESPN
Have you heard? ESPN is broadcasting the Super Bowl next January. (Kidding: If you watch ESPN, you are very aware.) That means the network’s stacked “Monday Night Football” schedule will be chock-full of promotions to make sure you know that. That’s not a dig, by the way; it is the biggest thing to happen on ESPN in the network’s history, and I would turn it into a yearlong festival, too. The 2025 season was a success — it was the second-most-watched “Monday Night Football” season since ESPN started airing the game, along with the always-rollicking alt-cast featuring Peyton and Eli Manning.
Though Week 1 of MNF will always draw huge numbers (and this season, Chiefs vs. Broncos will get a massive opening-week audience), I would say Chiefs-Pats in Week 15 is the one I am eyeing as a potential top-five regular-season ratings game, though it’s highly dependent on where Kansas City and New England sit in the standings. ESPN will go heavy on MNF simulcasts on ABC, which has the potential to juice the total audience tuning in.
(I don’t want to short-shrift Amazon Prime Video’s “Thursday Night Football,” which in 2025 had the most-watched season of Thursday night games in the two decades since Thursday night games were established. Prime Video also lucked into Christmas falling on a Thursday in 2025. When combined with the participation of the Chiefs, the NFL’s most popular TV draw, in a rivalry game versus Denver, Prime Video’s game last Christmas was a massive success. Though there will be no Christmas bump in 2026, for the fourth straight year, Prime Video will air its Black Friday game. Of the rest of the Thursday night slate, the one most likely to move the needle should be Chiefs at Rams in Week 13.)
Oh, yeah: Sunday afternoons (remember them?)
Chiefs at Broncos (Week 8)
Sunday, Nov. 1
4:25 p.m. ET, CBS
It is a larger conversation for another day that the prime-time games, the holiday games, the international games and the streaming games continue to take up so much national attention. After all, the league’s TV success is built on the sturdy foundation of Sunday afternoons — the two windows at 1 p.m. ET and 4:25-ish p.m. ET (with Scott Hanson’s NFL RedZone “Witching Hour” delighting fans between the two). Other than Thanksgiving, last season’s top three most-watched regular-season games of the season were on a Sunday afternoon — all featuring the Chiefs, for what it’s worth.
That’s why any pick for the most notable Sunday afternoon game of the season has to have the Chiefs (including, TV networks are hoping, Mahomes, who is by far the biggest individual player draw in the league). CBS has scheduled the Chiefs in four separate “national” Sunday afternoon windows. Give me Chiefs-Broncos in Week 8 with the most potential to lead the season’s Sunday afternoon ratings standings, but Bills-Pats in Week 13 also has the potential to crash the regular-season top five most-watched list.
Fox’s “America’s Game of the Week” also dominates Sunday afternoons, airing nationally. Fox’s NFC-heavy package is always studded with the brands that deliver the biggest audiences: the Cowboys, Eagles, Packers, 49ers and Bears. Chicago at Green Bay in Week 5 feels like it has the potential to be massive, but Week 17’s Lions-Bears game in Chicago seems like it could have potential playoff implications, amping the attention.