NFL Reportedly Opening 2026 Schedule on Wednesday Night, Latest Rumors on Week 1 Games

Some changes are reportedly coming to the first week of the NFL season.

Per Joe Flint of the Wall Street Journal, the league will begin the season on a Wednesday night rather than the typical Thursday. After the season opener Wednesday on NBC, the league's first-ever game in Melbourne will take place on Thursday.

In each of the last two years, the NFL has been able to play a game on the first Friday of the season since the season began during the first weekend of September rather than the second.

The Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961 prevents the NFL from scheduling games on Fridays for most of the year, and that will come back into play this year after not being an issue in 2024 and 2025.

Gerrit Meier, the league's managing director of international, hinted last September that a Wednesday season opener was on the table.

"We're thinking about it a lot," Meier told Albert Breer of The MMQB. "We do not have a Friday to play next year. Those were benefits we got through the schedule and the way it fell for last year and this year. We used both Fridays for Brazil. That Friday is not available for next year to us, regardless of where we play. So that, of course, imposes the question, Where do you play a Brazil game, which is still very much on the time zone plus/minus with the United States?

"Then, of course, something as quirky as Australia, which obviously is on a completely different timeframe, but you still have to make a viewable window for the United States. So you're 100 percent right, we need to look at it."

While the NFL played on a Wednesday in 2024 when Christmas was on hump day, this will be the first time since 2012 that the league has started the year on a Wednesday. That year, the NFL moved the first game of the year one day earlier to avoid playing it at the same time President Barack Obama delivered a prime-time address at the Democratic National Convention.