Eyes on Networks and Streamers as NFL Readies Schedule Release

The ramp up toward the release of the 2026 NFL regular-season schedule is accelerating, and the changes in that slate continue to grow. 

The NFL said late Thursday in an email blast to fans that the “schedule release is almost here.” League sources then confirmed to Front Office Sports on Friday that the full slate will be announced on Thursday, May 14, in a primetime special on ESPN2 and NFL Network. That date is in line with what’s been expected for weeks and matches the league’s timing in recent years to unveil the highly anticipated schedule.

Before that, though, each of the NFL’s key rights holders will hold their upfront presentations with advertisers to detail their programming plans for the 2026–27 television season. NFL games will be front and center in those events, as the league remains by far the most-watched content in all of U.S. television. 

NBC is first up in that sequence, and will hold its upfront Monday morning at Radio City Music Hall. Fox and Amazon will follow later on Monday, and most, if not all, of them are expected to reveal at least one key NFL game on their respective broadcast schedules. The other networks will then likely follow during their upfronts with their own “breadcrumb” games that will highlight their slates and precede the full schedule release.

Among the other developing changes surrounding the regular-season schedule:

• The NFL is still trying to close deals to the sale of rights to five games picked up in the league’s recent equity deal with ESPN and Disney. Netflix, which has made no secret of its desire to expand its relationships with the league, is particularly in line to pick up at least part of that inventory—including a likely game on Thanksgiving Eve. 
• There are already two confirmed games on the schedule. The 49ers will play the Rams on Thursday, Sept. 10 in Melbourne, Australia, with Netflix also a strong candidate to air that game. The Cowboys, meanwhile, will play the Ravens in Rio de Janeiro on Sunday, Sept. 27 at 4:25 p.m. That contest, one of a record nine global games planned for the 2026 season, will air on CBS. The full run of international games will be announced on May 13 at 9 a.m. ET on NFL Network’s Good Morning Football, and in advance of the primetime special the following day.

Politics and Business

As the NFL prepares to announce the schedule, it continues to face rising political pressure from its growing embrace of streamers such as Netflix and YouTube. 

There are at least four major efforts unfolding in the nation’s capital probing the NFL’s media strategy. Most recently, league EVP of media distribution Hans Schroeder met with the Federal Communications Commission to detail the league’s continued focus on broadcast television—including its long-time practice of showing every game over the air in the home markets of the competing teams.

A key driver in much of that activity from Washington is seen as stemming from Fox, one of the league’s longest-running rights holders. Despite that tie now in its fourth decade, the network is bracing for a sharp increase in its NFL rights fees, as are other networks. Fox, however, is particularly exposed as it has among the smallest market capitalizations of all the major media companies with league rights. 

In February, Fox CEO and executive chair Lachlan Murdoch said the company is prepared to “rebalance” its network’s sports rights portfolio to keep the NFL. 

For months, NFL sources have pointed to Fox as a key player in the rising political scrutiny. The Wall Street Journal then put a finer point on that, reporting that network chairman emeritus Rupert Murdoch, Lachlan’s father, met in February with U.S. President Donald Trump to make the case that if streamers gained rights to more NFL games it would “kill” broadcast networks.