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An 18-game NFL season, if it happens, is still at least two years away.
The league finalized plans Friday to hold Super Bowl LXII in Atlanta on Feb. 13, 2028. Since the NFL settled on Mercedes-Benz Stadium as the event host in October 2024, the league held several potential dates for the game while consideration continues on the enlarged regular season.
That deliberation around the timetable for the 2027 NFL season has extended for nearly two years, even as the league has since awarded Super Bowls for 2029 and 2030 to Las Vegas and Nashville, respectively.
The establishment of the Feb. 13, 2028 date, however, effectively confirms that a 17-game schedule will remain in place for the 2027 season that leads up to Super Bowl LXII. Atlanta officials and local hospitality executives had grown increasingly frustrated about their inability to advance their planning for Super Bowl LXII, and the litany of related events, without a confirmed game date.
The upcoming 2026 NFL season will also have a 17-game schedule, culminating with Super Bowl LXI at Sofi Stadium in California on Feb. 14, 2027.
Negotiating Elements
Many individual NFL team owners, notably the Patriots’ Robert Kraft, have been openly coveting an 18-game season, with the schedule expansion particularly seen as a way to advance the league’s international ambitions.
The NFL Players Association, however, has been openly resistant of the concept. The union has also been in transition after appointing JC Tretter to its executive director role in March, and formal bargaining with the league on this has not begun.
NFL commissioner Roger Goodell, meanwhile, has taken a more cautious public position on the topic, indicating earlier this year that going to an 18-game season was not “a given.”
