NFL 2026 (M)

On 8 February 1936, in a room at Philadelphia's Ritz-Carlton hotel, nine clubs took turns dividing up 81 college players. The Eagles picked first and took Jay Berwanger, the first Heisman winner in history. He never played a professional down: he wanted a thousand dollars a game, Philadelphia traded his rights to the Bears, George Halas couldn't sign him either, and he ended up selling rubber. The first pick of the first draft never set foot on a field — but the mechanism stuck for good: the worst team chooses before the champion.

The league itself had been founded sixteen years earlier, on 20 August 1920, in the Hupmobile car dealership Ralph Hay ran in Canton, Ohio. It was called the American Professional Football Conference; a month later, Association; and on 24 June 1922, the National Football League. What turned it into today's machine arrived in 1961: a judge struck down its joint contract with CBS, and Congress answered with the Sports Broadcasting Act, signed by Kennedy on 30 September. Ever since, the clubs sell television as a single block and split the money evenly, which is why Green Bay is paid exactly what New York is paid.

On 8 June 1966 the NFL agreed to merge with the AFL, the rival league that had been buying its players away; the merger completed in 1970, and three old NFL clubs moved into the AFC to leave thirteen and thirteen. The final brake arrived in 1994 — the salary cap, at 34.6 million per team. This year it is 301.2. For all that levelling, the honours list still has owners: the Patriots and Steelers hold six rings, the Cowboys and 49ers five. And four franchises — Browns, Lions, Jaguars and Texans — have never won one.

Twenty-seven carries for 135 yards, plus 26 more receiving. That line earned Kenneth Walker III the MVP award of Super Bowl LX, played on 8 February 2026 at Levi's Stadium in Santa Clara: Seattle 29, New England 13. No running back had won it since Terrell Davis in January 1998, in a league that has handed it almost exclusively to quarterbacks for two decades.

The defence settled it. Seattle sacked Drake Maye six times, forced three turnovers and closed the night with a pick-six. It was the Seahawks' second Lombardi after the 43-8 win over Denver on 2 February 2014, and a bitter night for Mike Vrabel, named coach of the year for the second time in his career only weeks earlier.

The season's biggest individual prize, meanwhile, went to someone who never reached that final. Matthew Stafford threw for 4,707 yards and 46 touchdowns with the best touchdown-to-interception ratio in the league (5.8), and beat Drake Maye to the MVP by five points: the tightest vote since 2003, and the latest first-time win in the award's history. Jaxon Smith-Njigba, a receiver for the Seahawks themselves, led the league in receiving yards and took the offensive award. A champion crowned by its defence and an MVP who watched the final on television: this is how badly the league treats anyone trying to call it.

Nine games outside the United States, a league record. Melbourne opens the parade on 11 September, Rio de Janeiro follows on the 27th at the Maracanã, and then comes the European block: three straight Sundays in London — 4, 11 and 18 October — the Stade de France on 25 October for the first regular-season game ever played in France, the Santiago Bernabéu on 8 November with the Atlanta Falcons against the Cincinnati Bengals, and Munich's Allianz Arena on the 15th. Mexico City closes the tour on 22 November.

Seven teams changed head coach in January, and two of them are the kind people remember. John Harbaugh left Baltimore, where he piled up twelve playoff appearances and six division titles, and signed with the Giants on 20 January: five years, one hundred million dollars. A week later Mike McCarthy arrived in Pittsburgh as only the fourth head coach the Steelers have hired since 1969 — some franchises have burned through that many in a single decade.

Seattle defends its title without the MVP of its own final: Kenneth Walker III signed for Kansas City in March. The salary cap rises to 301.2 million, twenty-two more than last year and above 300 for the first time. And the rulebook approved in Phoenix brings two changes with teeth: the onside kick can now be attempted at any point in the game rather than only in the fourth quarter, and Friday fixtures no longer count as a short week. That second one is not paperwork — Friday 25 December carries three games, with the Packers in Chicago, the Bills in Denver and the Rams in Seattle. The season's opening night, meanwhile, repeats the bill of the last one.

Eighteen weeks for seventeen games: every team rests once, and which week it gets can decide its year. That makes 272 regular-season fixtures across 32 clubs, two conferences — AFC and NFC — and eight divisions of four. You play your three division rivals twice, home and away; almost everyone else once or not at all. Two teams can finish with identical records having never met, and that is where the tiebreakers start: head-to-head first, then record inside the division.

The final week has a rule of its own that catches outsiders out. All sixteen games on 10 January are division matchups — Ravens against Steelers, Commanders against Cowboys, Cardinals against 49ers — and their kickoff times are not announced until the previous week ends, so the league can push whatever still matters into prime time. Nobody yet knows what time they will watch their team's last game.

Fourteen teams reach the playoffs: the four division winners in each conference plus three at-large invitations on record. Only each side's top seed rests; the other six play the wild card round between 16 and 18 January. Then the divisional round on the 23rd and 24th, the conference championship games on the 31st, and Super Bowl LXI on 14 February 2027 at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood. It will be the first Super Bowl played on Valentine's Day and the latest in history. One single game decides everything: there is no best-of-seven series to fix a bad afternoon.