Week 1 of NFL play will not include a Friday game next season, the league said Tuesday.
NFL executive vice president and COO Hans Schroeder confirmed during a conference call with reporters that the league cannot legally open its season the same way it has the past couple of years.
The change is due to an antitrust provision in the Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961 that bans broadcasts of professional football by any station within 75 miles of a high school or college football game. It specifies that pro games cannot run on any Friday or Saturday from the second Friday in September through the second Saturday in December.
This was not a problem for the NFL last season or this one. The league likes to begin its season on the first Thursday after Labor Day. Because the holiday has fallen so early in the calendar, the NFL has been able to broadcast Friday night games during the first week of the month.
In 2026, however, Labor Day isn’t until Sept. 7. That puts the following Thursday in the second week of the month. Since the SBA blackout begins the second Friday of September, it would be illegal to broadcast that night.
Congress passed the SBA to help insulate high school and college football from facing direct pressure from professional games.
High school football games traditionally happen on Fridays, while college games dominate Saturday sports schedules. So, the logic went, if a pro league ran games at the same time as the sport’s other levels, it would rob them of the chance to compete as their own products.
For the 2024 season, Labor Day fell on Sept. 2, so the NFL could play that first Friday and avoid the blackout period. It used that loophole to run an international game between the Philadelphia Eagles and Green Bay Packers in São Paolo, Brazil. Every Week 2 game (i.e., in the second week of September) then ran on a Monday, Thursday or Sunday.
The 2025 season begins on Thursday, Sept. 4, with the defending champion Eagles hosting the Dallas Cowboys.
Using the same exception as last season, the Los Angeles Chargers and Kansas City Chiefs will play on Friday, Sept. 5, once again in São Paolo. Week 2 games will all run on a Monday, Thursday or Sunday, as usual.
Friday night NFL games date back to Sept. 18, 1970, when the Los Angeles Rams faced the St. Louis Cardinals. The Rams won, 34-13. Three days later, the first edition of Monday Night Football aired on ABC, and the Cleveland Browns defeated the New York Jets, 31-21.
The NFL held three games in London last season, playing twice at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium and once at Wembley Stadium. (Richard Heathcote / Getty Images)
The NFL announced in February that its 2026 season will begin with the league’s first-ever regular-season game in Australia at the Melbourne Cricket Ground. While there is still no specific date, the game is set to feature the Los Angeles Rams as the home team. The Rams’ opponent in that game has not been announced yet.
Including its return to São Paolo, the NFL will host seven games outside the United States this year.
The Minnesota Vikings and Pittsburgh Steelers play the NFL’s first regular-season game in Dublin, Ireland, during Week 4. Then, the Vikings and the Cleveland Browns will face off in London for Week 5.
Two more London games follow over the subsequent weeks, with the Denver Broncos and New York Jets playing there in Week 6 and the Rams facing the Jacksonville Jaguars in Week 7.
Berlin will host a Week 10 game between the Atlanta Falcons and Indianapolis Colts, and then, in Week 11, the Washington Commanders and Miami Dolphins will play the NFL’s first game in Madrid.
The NFL wants to beef up its international slate over the coming years, but doing so will require further negotiations with the NFL Players’ Association. According to the current collective bargaining agreement, the two sides must meet before the start of this season if they want to expand international play to 10 games, which is the league’s goal.
Commissioner Roger Goodell has said he hopes to eventually have a 17-game slate spread around the world as part of the league’s expanding global footprint.
(Top photo: Wagner Meier / Getty Images)