The NFL has announced its full 18-week, 272-game, regular season schedule for the coming season via the now-familiar television marathon, despite several ‘highlight’ games and the six-sevenths of the International Series having already been revealed.

The new season kicks off on Thursday 4^th September in Philadelphia and concludes with a full slate of 16 divisional games in Week 18, with two fixtures on the final Saturday (3^rd January) and 14 the following day. For the 16th consecutive year, all 16 games scheduled for the final week of the season are divisional contests, enhancing the potential for more games with playoff ramifications. Byes will begin in Week 5 and end in Week 14.

The schedule will see each team playing 17 regular season games and three preseason games for the fifth consecutive year — a format that may soon change as consideration of an 18^th regular season game ramps up. As usual, the ‘17th game’ will pit teams from opposing conferences against each other, with the AFC having home conference honours in 2025.

The NFL again used the power of AWS to finalise its schedule, with approximately a quadrillion possible fixture combinations and over 26,000 factors to take into consideration — including stadium availability, travel requirements, primetime games, competitive fairness and division rivalries — before the best possible calendar is reached each year.

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The NFL’s 106th season begins with the league’s annual primetime kickoff game, which sees the defending Super Bowl champion Philadelphia Eagles host NFC East — and bitterest — rival Dallas Cowboys at Lincoln Financial Field on 4^th September. The following night, the Kansas City Chiefs and the Los Angeles Chargers will meet at Corinthians Arena in São Paulo, Brazil, for the second-ever regular season NFL game to be played in South America. Both matchups had already been revealed prior to the full schedule release, with the Brazilian game also being the first NFL game to be streamed live — and free — in its entirety exclusively on YouTube.

Week 1 continues on Sunday 7^th September with three divisional games in the early window, as the Tampa Bay Buccaneers visit the Atlanta Falcons, the Cincinnati Bengals visit the Cleveland Browns and the Washington Commanders host the New York Giants. Six of the eight teams participating in the late window on Kickoff Weekend won at least 10 games last season, with divisional battles between San Francisco and Seattle, and Detroit and Green Bay also on the opening weekend slate.

Later that day, NBC’s Sunday Night Football schedule begins with Lamar Jackson and the Baltimore Ravens visiting Josh Allen and the Buffalo Bills in a rematch of last season’s AFC Divisional round clash. Kickoff Weekend then concludes on 8^th September with Monday Night Football featuring the NFC North matchup between the Minnesota Vikings and Chicago Bears.

Weeks 2 and 7 will feature two Monday night games ,with broadcasts at 7pm and 10pm ET, while Weeks 4 and 6 will also contain a pair of games on Monday, kicking off at 7.15pm and 8.15pm ET respectively. Additionally, two games with playoff implications will be scheduled for the Saturday of Week 18 (3^rd January), but the teams for those games will only be selected following the conclusion of the Week 17 slate. There will be no Monday night game on the final regular season weekend in order to provide more flexibility for the scheduling of the opening weekend of the NFL playoffs.

Thursday Night Football will air exclusively on Prime Video in 2025, kicking off its schedule in Week 2 with Jordan Love and the Green Bay Packers hosting Jayden Daniels and the Washington Commanders. The Amazon offshoot will broadcast 15 Thursday night games between Weeks 2-17, excluding Thanksgiving night but including Christmas, and will exclusively stream the third annual NFL Black Friday game, when the Philadelphia Eagles host the Chicago Bears in Week 13.

The Madden Thanksgiving Celebration will again feature a Thursday triple-header, this time on 27^th November, with the Packers travelling to Detroit and the Chiefs visiting Dallas before an AFC North matchup between Baltimore and Cincinnati.

For the second consecutive season, Netflix will also stream two NFL games on Christmas Day, as the Dallas Cowboys visit the Washington Commanders and the Minnesota Vikings host the Detroit Lions in what could be pivotal Week 17 matchups.

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Six of the expanded International Series’ seven games had already been revealed on NFL Network’s Good Morning Football show more than 24 hours before the full schedule release, and rumours were already rife about the Chiefs’ participation in the seventh, against the Chargers in Brazil, before the three-hour Wednesday night marathon went on air.

Along with three games in the UK and the one in Brazil, the NFL will play first-ever regular season games in three new cities this year, with Berlin, Dublin and Madrid joining the rotation. As part of the league’s expansion of the regular season to 17 games in 2022, it was determined that teams from the conference hosting a ninth regular season home game would be among the designated group to play a neutral-site international game each year, with the Chargers being joined by Jacksonville, Cleveland, Indianapolis, Miami, Pittsburgh and the New York Jets in having that ‘honour’ in 2025.

The international slate begins in Brazil on the opening weekend of the season, before four games in consecutive weeks, beginning at Dublin’s Croke Park in Week 4 with the Minnesota Vikings meeting the Pittsburgh Steelers. The following week, Minnesota will become the first team to play consecutive international games in different countries when they meet the Browns at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in London, which remains the venue for the Week 6 clash between the Broncos and Jets. The action then shifts to Wembley Stadium in Week 7, when the resident Jaguars play host to the Los Angeles Rams.

Continuing the theme of certain teams (not including the Jaguars) becoming regular overseas participants, the first-ever game in Berlin, in Week 10, sees the Atlanta Falcons visiting the Colts, before the international schedule concludes with Madrid’s debut as the ‘home team’ Dolphins take on the Washington Commanders at the Estadio Santiago Bernabéu.

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Some 15 games this season will be Super Bowl rematches and 12 are rematches from the 2024 playoffs, including a reprise of Super Bowl LIX between the Eagles and Chiefs in Week 2, both Championship Games — KC at Buffalo in Week 9 and the two NFC East games between Philadelphia and Washington in Weeks 16 and 18 — and each of the four Divisional playoff games, featuring Baltimore at Buffalo in Week 1, the Rams at Philadelphia in Week 3, Detroit at Washington in Week 10 and Houston at Kansas City in Week 14.

The NFL will continue to use ‘flexible scheduling’ to ensure exciting and meaningful games are available for viewing by the largest number of fans, and Week 18’s Saturday, Sunday afternoon and Sunday night games are not yet assigned. Specific dates, start times and networks for Week 18 matchups will, as mentioned before, only be determined following the conclusion of Week 17.

For a sixth-consecutive year, a total of 14 teams – seven in each conference – will make the postseason, with the number one seeds receive a bye through the Wild Card round. Despite a bid from the Lions to have the postseason seeding process revisited, the remaining division champions will be seeded two, three and four, with the next three teams with the best record in their conference being slotted fifth, sixth and seventh.

Since 1990 — a streak of 35 consecutive seasons — at least four ‘new’ teams have qualified for the playoffs having missed out on the postseason the year before. Wild Card Weekend will feature six games, starting on Saturday 10^th January, with the Divisional Playoffs (17-18^th January) and Conference Championship games (25^th January) following on ensuing weekends. Super Bowl LX, at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, takes place on Sunday 8^th February.

The full 272-game schedule can be found on www.nfl.com