NEW YORK—As declines in linear TV viewing make the ongoing popularity of live sports, particularly football, central to financial success of the TV industry, the NFL has released details of its 2024 regular season that will play a major role in the success of broadcasters, networks and streaming companies in the last four months of 2024.
The league schedule includes specific details on the specific regular season games that will be aired or streamed by CBS, NBC, Fox, ESPN, ABC, Prime Video, Peacock, Netflix and The NFL Network during the 18-week, 272-game regular-season schedule for 2024, which kicks off on Thursday night, September 5, in Kansas City and concludes with 16 division games in Week 18 – two on Saturday, January 4, and 14 on Sunday, January 5.
For the 2024 NFL regular-season schedule by week, click here.
For the 2024 NFL preseason schedule, click here.
More specifically, the NFL released these details about the schedule, which it described as follows:
The 2024 NFL schedule, powered by AWS, will feature each team playing 17 regular-season games and three preseason games for the fourth consecutive year. The 17th game will feature teams from opposing conferences that finished in the same standing within their respective divisions the previous season. The NFC will be the home conference for the 17th game in 2024. For how opponents were determined for the 2024 season, click here.
The NFL uses the power of Amazon Web Services (AWS) to power its schedule-making process. There are approximately a quadrillion possible schedule combinations each NFL season and over 26,000 factors to take into consideration such as stadium availability, travel requirements, primetime games, competitive fairness and division rivalries. The NFL uses AWS to run high performance computing workloads to find the best possible schedule each year. For more information, click here.
The NFL's 105th season begins with the league's annual primetime kickoff game, as the defending Super Bowl Champion Kansas City Chiefs host the Baltimore Ravens at GEHA Field at Arrowhead Stadium on Thursday, September 5 (8:20 p.m. ET, NBC) in a rematch of last season's AFC Championship Game.
The two most recent winners of the Most Valuable Player award, Baltimore's Lamar Jackson (2023) and Kansas City's Patrick Mahomes (2022), are scheduled to face off for the sixth time in their careers, including the postseason. Should both players start as expected, Jackson (two-time MVP) and Mahomes (two-time MVP) would become the seventh different pair of quarterbacks to meet in a regular-season game after both players had won multiple MVP awards.
The NFL's primetime kickoff game – which has been an annual tradition since 2002 – will feature a rematch of one of the previous season's conference championship games for only the third time and first since 2010, when New Orleans defeated Minnesota in a rematch of the NFC Championship. The other instance was 2004, when New England defeated Indianapolis in a rematch of the AFC Championship.
On Friday, September 6 (8:15 p.m. ET, Peacock), the Green Bay Packers will meet the Philadelphia Eagles at Corinthians Arena in São Paulo, Brazil, the first-ever regular season NFL game to be played in South America. It will mark the first time the NFL has played a game on Friday of their opening weekend in over 50 years, when the St. Louis Cardinals and Los Angeles Rams met on September 18, 1970.
Week 1 continues on CBS at 4:05 PM ET, with two head coaches making their Week 1 debut with their club as Antonio Pierce and the Las Vegas Raiders visit Jim Harbaugh and the Los Angeles Chargers in an AFC West showdown, while Super Bowl-winning head coach Sean Payton and the Denver Broncos travel to Seattle to face the Seahawks, where Mike Macdonald will make his NFL head coaching debut. On FOX at 4:25 PM ET, the Dallas Cowboys visit the Cleveland Browns in a matchup of two 2023 playoff teams and the Washington Commanders, under new head coach Dan Quinn, travel to take on the reigning NFC South champion Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
Later that day, NBC's Sunday Night Football begins with Mathew Stafford and the Los Angeles Rams visiting Jared Goff and the Detroit Lions (8:20 p.m. ET), in a rematch of last season's NFC Wild Card round, in which the Lions earned their first playoff victory since 1991. NBC will televise one game each Sunday night in Weeks 1-17. Additionally, NBC will feature Miami at Green Bay (8:20 p.m. ET) on Thanksgiving night as well as Houston at Kansas City (1 p.m. ET) on Saturday in Week 16.
Kickoff Weekend concludes on Monday, September 9, with ESPN/ABC's Monday Night Football, featuring Aaron Rodgers and the New York Jets visiting Brock Purdy and the San Francisco 49ers (8:15 p.m. ET). YouTube TV is the presenting sponsor of Kickoff Weekend, inclusive of the entire Thursday through Monday slate.
ESPN will televise one game each Monday night in Weeks 1-17 and will be simulcast on ABC in Weeks 1, 8, 14 and 17. In Weeks 3 and 4, there will be two Monday night games with broadcasts at 7:30 p.m. ET and 8:15 p.m. ET. In Week 7, there will be two Monday night games, with Baltimore at Tampa Bay on ESPN at 8:15 p.m. ET and the Los Angeles Chargers at Arizona on ESPN+ at 9 p.m. ET. In Week 15, the two Monday night games begin 30 minutes apart, with Chicago at Minnesota at 8 p.m. ET on ABC and Atlanta at Las Vegas at 8:30 p.m. ET on ESPN.
Additionally, ESPN/ABC will air two games with playoff implications on the Saturday of Week 18, January 4, at 4:30 p.m. ET and 8 p.m. ET. These games will be selected following the conclusion of Week 17. There will be no Monday night game on the final regular-season weekend (Week 18) to provide more flexibility for the scheduling of the opening weekend of the NFL playoffs.
Thursday Night Football will air exclusively on Prime Video, kicking off its slate in Week 2 with an AFC East matchup as the Miami Dolphins host the Buffalo Bills (8:15 p.m. ET). Prime Video will broadcast 15 Thursday Night Football games between Weeks 2-17 (excluding Thanksgiving night) and exclusively stream the second-ever NFL Black Friday game when the Kansas City Chiefs host the Las Vegas Raiders in Week 13 (3 p.m. ET).
The first-ever NFL games streamed on Netflix will be played on Christmas, Wednesday, December 25, in Week 17, as the Kansas City Chiefs visit the Pittsburgh Steelers (1 p.m. ET) and the Baltimore Ravens travel to face the Houston Texans (4:30 p.m. ET). Additionally, Netflix will stream at least one holiday game in 2025 and 2026.
NFL Network will exclusively televise seven games – four international games and three games in Week 17 on Saturday, December 28.
The NFL schedule features five international regular-season games – three in the UK, one in Germany and one in Brazil, marking the first-ever regular-season NFL game to be played in South America. As part of the league's expansion of the regular season to 17 games, it was determined that, beginning with the 2022 season, teams from the conference whose teams were eligible for a ninth regular-season home game would be among the designated group to play a neutral-site international game each year.
The international slate begins in Week 1 in Brazil with Green Bay and Philadelphia (8:15 p.m. ET, Peacock) and follows with games in three consecutive weeks, beginning in London at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in Week 5 with the New York Jets and Minnesota Vikings (Sunday, 9:30 a.m. ET, NFL Network). In Week 6, Jacksonville meets Chicago (Sunday, 9:30 a.m. ET, NFL Network) at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium before the London action shifts to Wembley Stadium in Week 7, when the Jaguars will meet the New England Patriots (Sunday, 9:30 a.m. ET, NFL Network). The Jaguars are scheduled to play two regular-season games outside of the United States for the second-consecutive season.
As part of the league's commitment to playing regular-season games in Germany, the NFL will conclude the international slate of games in Munich in Week 10 as the New York Giants meet the Carolina Panthers (Sunday, 9:30 a.m. ET, NFL Network). It will mark the league's second game in Munich at Allianz Arena – Home of FC Bayern Munich and the fourth international regular-season game to be played in Germany.
The Madden Thanksgiving Celebration will feature a tripleheader on Thursday, November 28. The first game will feature a pair of NFC North foes, as the Bears travel to Detroit to face the Lions (12:30 p.m. ET, CBS). The late afternoon game will match two NFC East rivals, as the New York Giants visit the Dallas Cowboys (4:30 p.m. ET, FOX). The Thanksgiving Day festivities end with the Miami Dolphins traveling to Green Bay to face the Packers on NBC (8:20 p.m. ET).
The regular season will conclude with Week 18 on Saturday, January 4, and Sunday, January 5. For the 15th consecutive year, all 16 games scheduled for the final week of the season are division contests, enhancing the potential for more games with playoff ramifications.
The NFL's 32 teams will each play 17 games over 18 weeks. Byes will begin in Week 5 and end in Week 14.
Additional 2024 schedule notes:
- Fourteen games will be Super Bowl rematches and nine 2024 games are rematches from the 2023 playoffs, including Super Bowl LVIII (Kansas City at San Francisco in Week 7), both Championship Games (Baltimore at Kansas City in Week 1; Detroit at San Francisco in Week 17) and all four Divisional playoff games (Tampa Bay at Detroit in Week 2; Kansas City at Buffalo in Week 11; San Francisco at Green Bay in Week 12; Baltimore at Houston in Week 17).
- The top-two picks in the 2024 NFL Draft, Caleb Williams and Jayden Daniels, are scheduled to meet in Week 8 when the Chicago Bears visit the Washington Commanders (1 p.m. ET, CBS). Should both players start, it would mark the sixth game in NFL history between rookie starting quarterbacks selected with the first and second overall picks in the NFL Draft. Williams and the Bears are also slated to play against No. 3 overall pick Drake Maye and the New England Patriots in Week 10 (1 p.m. ET, FOX) and No. 4 overall pick Marvin Harrison and the Arizona Cardinals in Week 9 (4:05 p.m. ET, CBS).
The NFL will continue to use “flexible scheduling" this season to ensure exciting and meaningful games are available for viewing by the largest number of fans. For up-to-date information about “flexible scheduling" for the 2024 season, please visit https://www.nfl.com/schedules/flexible-scheduling-procedures.
As in prior seasons, for Week 18, the final weekend of the season, the scheduling of the Saturday, Sunday afternoon, and the Sunday night games is not assigned. In Week 18, two games will be played on Saturday (4:30 p.m. ET and 8 p.m. ET) with the remainder to be played on Sunday afternoon (1 p.m. ET and 4:25 p.m. ET) and one matchup to be played on Sunday night (8:20 p.m. ET). Specific dates, start times, and networks for Week 18 matchups will be determined and announced following the conclusion of Week 17.
Introduced in 2020 and continuing for a fifth-consecutive year, a total of 14 teams – seven each in the American and National Football Conferences – will make the postseason. The No. 1 seed in each conference will receive a bye in the Wild Card round. The remaining division champions in each conference with the best records will be seeded 2, 3, and 4, followed by the next three teams per conference with the best records seeded 5, 6, and 7.
Since 1990 – a streak of 34 consecutive seasons – at least four new teams have qualified for the playoffs that missed the postseason the year before, including seven of the 14 playoff teams in 2022.
AFC and NFC Wild Card games will feature the 2 seed hosting the 7 seed, the 3 seed hosting the 6 seed and the 4 seed hosting the 5 seed.
Super Wild Card Weekend presented by Verizon for the 2024 season will feature six games, starting on Saturday, January 11.
Wild Card winners join the top seeds in each conference in the Divisional Playoffs, presented by Intuit TurboTax, on Saturday and Sunday, January 18-19. The AFC and NFC Championship Games, presented by Intuit TurboTax, will be played on Sunday, January 26. The winners meet two weeks later on Sunday, February 9, in Super Bowl LIX at New Orleans' Caesars Superdome (FOX), marking the 11th time the league's final game will be played in New Orleans.
The NFL is the only sports league that presents all regular-season and postseason games on free, over-the-air television in local markets. All postseason games are distributed nationally.
Westwood One will broadcast on radio all NFL primetime games, the three Thanksgiving Day games and the entire NFL playoffs. SiriusXM subscribers will have access to every live NFL game, as well as exclusive 24/7 talk channel coverage on SXM NFL Radio. All live and local prime time games will be available to stream on mobile devices with NFL+.
