Fox Chases NFL Record With 2026 Thanksgiving Day Game

Fox’s pursuit of an NFL viewership record will lean on another heated NFC East division rivalry.

The network said as part of its upfront presentation to advertisers Monday in New York that it will air an Eagles-Cowboys game in the late-afternoon window on Thanksgiving Day. That game, leaning into of the league’s most storied rivalries, will seek to exceed the audience average of 57.2 million for last year’s broadcast in that window between the Chiefs and Cowboys on CBS.

That figure set a record as the most-watched regular-season game in NFL history, and is prompting league and network executives to believe there is perhaps no ceiling to what is possible on the U.S. holiday.

Despite winning Super Bowl LIX, the Eagles are not quite the viewership draw of Kansas City, which was involved in four of the five most-watched games in the 2025 regular season. Conversely, the league is continuing a successful push to make its holiday games into major events as much as possible.

Fox and the NFL will also likely have the benefit of an expanded Nielsen methodology for measuring co-viewing within households. A recent pilot program found that the new process generated a 4.2% audience lift during several top events in February, including Super Bowl LX.

That latest move adds to prior Nielsen introductions of its Big Data + Panel process last September and an enlarged counting of out-of-home audiences that began in early 2025.

Regardless of the final count, though, this late-afternoon Thanksgiving game is traditionally the most-watched broadcast of each NFL regular season. The upcoming game will be the Eagles’ eighth contest on Thanksgiving, and the first in Dallas since 2014. 

Dropping Breadcrumbs

The news of the Thanksgiving game is one of several reveals by NFL rights holders in advance ofthe full schedule drop on Thursday. NBC kicked off that sequence with its announcement of another NFC East rivalry, the Cowboys and Giants, to begin its Sunday Night Football schedule.

Earlier Monday, Fox also said that it picked up rights to two additional NFL games in the 2026 season—one an international game in Week 10 from Germany involving the Lions, and the other a Saturday clash in Week 15.