May 14, 2026
·Max Meyer
The 2026 NFL schedule is finally here, which means the countdown to football season officially shifts to actual planning.
This is the fun part. With dates now set, NFL fans can start circling the games that feel bigger than a normal Sunday. Every NFL regular season has marquee games, but the 2026 slate is loaded with matchups that feel built to be experienced live.
Among the 272 games on this regular-season slate, here are the ones that jump off the page and stand out from the rest of the pack.
Ranking the best games of the 2026 NFL regular season
From top-tier rivalries to marquee quarterback matchups and even some strong revenge angles, there are colossal clashes all over the schedule. With the full slate officially out, these are the 10 best games to attend for the upcoming NFL regular season.
1. Kansas City Chiefs at Buffalo Bills (Week 12: Thursday, Nov. 26 at 8:20 PM ET)
Any Patrick Mahomes vs. Josh Allen matchup is already appointment viewing, because they almost always turn into classics. This one has a different edge, though, and not just because this is the Thanksgiving nightcap. With Mahomes coming back from the torn ACL that wrecked Kansas City’s 2025 season, the superstar Chiefs quarterback may not be entering this matchup as the inevitable final boss of the AFC.
The Bills have their own reset going on. Sean McDermott is gone after nine seasons, and Joe Brady is now running the whole operation after previously working with Josh Allen as quarterbacks coach and offensive coordinator. That makes this more than another Allen-Mahomes showdown. Yes, the postseason history still hangs over this matchup, but the immediate question is simpler: which team looks more like itself? It is Brady’s pivotal measuring-stick game as the guy in charge, while the Chiefs need to prove they are still the class of the AFC.
Any Mahomes-Allen duel belongs at the top of the list. But this latest edition in the NFL’s best quarterback rivalry is a major test of whether Kansas City and Buffalo still belong at the center of the AFC conversation. Just make sure you're still awake for this clash after your Thanksgiving meal.
2. Los Angeles Rams at Seattle Seahawks (Week 16: Friday, Dec. 25 at 8:15 PM ET)
The Rams already had the Seahawks beaten in Seattle last season. Then Lumen Field swallowed the game whole. In Week 16, Los Angeles had a chance to take control of the NFC West race, only for Seattle to rip the game away late and win in overtime after hitting its third two-point conversion in the final 15 minutes.
Then the Rams had to see them again in the playoffs, and it somehow got just as tight. Matthew Stafford and Sam Darnold both threw for more than 300 yards with three touchdowns and no interceptions, but Seattle survived on the final play and kept moving toward what became a Super Bowl season.
That is why the 2026 trip back to Lumen Field is one the first games to circle for any NFL fan. Stafford, Sean McVay and Puka Nacua get another shot at the team that wrecked their season, while Darnold, Jaxon Smith-Njigba and Mike Macdonald get to defend the title in front of the loudest possible audience.
3. Kansas City Chiefs at Seattle Seahawks (Week 7: Sunday, Oct. 25 at 8:20 PM ET)
Kenneth Walker III is going to get a strange reception at Lumen Field. He was the Super Bowl MVP for the Seahawks, the back who helped finish off the Patriots in February, and then he was gone a month later because Kansas City gave him the contract the Seahawks would not. Walker returning in a Chiefs uniform turns this matchup into something Seattle fans will be trying to process in real time.
The non-revenge football angles are just as good. Patrick Mahomes is coming off the torn ACL, and now one of his first major road tests could come against Mike Macdonald’s defense in Seattle. That is a brutal place to ask any quarterback to prove he is fully back, especially facing a pass rush and crowd noise combination that turn any routine play into chaos.
Mahomes already has his obvious AFC heavyweight games against Josh Allen, Joe Burrow and Lamar Jackson. But this matchup is different, with the league’s best quarterback going up against the NFL’s best defense. Add in the chess battle between two of the brightest coaching minds in Macdonald and Andy Reid, and you have pure X’s-and-O’s nirvana.
4. Buffalo Bills at Los Angeles Rams (Week 5: Monday, Oct. 12 at 8:15 PM ET)
A primetime matchup featuring the last two MVP winners? Sign us up, immediately.
The Bills and Rams will both enter the season among the NFL’s top Super Bowl candidates, and their gunslingers under center are big reasons why. Josh Allen and Matthew Stafford have two of the strongest arms in the game, so be prepared to see some jaw-dropping throws at SoFi Stadium to close out Week 5.
Stafford running it back with Rams offensive mastermind Sean McVay and star wideout Puka Nacua likely means that it will be a tough night for Buffalo’s defense to get stops. But this is also a massive chance for a big statement win for new Bills head coach Joe Brady, and he has a quarterback that can give him a fighting chance to pull it off.
5. Buffalo Bills at Baltimore Ravens (Week 8: Sunday, Nov. 1 at 1 PM ET)
Josh Allen and Lamar Jackson have been among the AFC’s best for years, but this version at M&T Bank Stadium comes with a different sideline setup. The Bills are now Joe Brady’s team after Sean McDermott’s nine-year run ended, and the Ravens are turning the page from John Harbaugh to Jesse Minter. That means two MVP-level quarterbacks are walking into this game with new head coaches trying to prove their squads can still look like contenders right away.
The recent history gives this more edge than a standard AFC showcase. Two years ago, Buffalo knocked Baltimore out of the playoffs after Mark Andrews dropped the potential game-tying two-point conversion with nearly 90 seconds left, the kind of miss that follows a team for a while. Now the Ravens get Allen again, with a new head coach, a new pass-rush piece in Trey Hendrickson and another chance to prove one late mistake did not close their window.
The quarterback battle is still the reason people will care first. Allen and Jackson are two of the few players in the league who can make a good defensive call irrelevant. Each signal-caller is still looking for his first Super Bowl, and this matchup could help determine who gets the pivotal home field in the AFC playoffs to help kickstart that run.
6. Philadelphia Eagles at Dallas Cowboys (Week 12: Thursday, Nov. 26 at 4:30 p.m. ET)
The Cowboys host a Thanksgiving game at AT&T Stadium every year, but the whole thing gets turned up when the Eagles are the team walking into Dallas. This is already one of the NFL’s most watched annual stages, and now it gets the Cowboys’ biggest rival and a crowd that will have been in the building all afternoon waiting to boo Philadelphia.
The football should match the setting. Jalen Hurts, Saquon Barkley and DeVonta Smith lead an Eagles offense that can punish Dallas’ defense on the ground or through the air. On the other side, Dak Prescott and CeeDee Lamb are one of the league’s deadliest duos and can turn one busted coverage into the play that swings the whole afternoon.
The holiday slot is what makes this one of the best games to attend, but the rivalry is what keeps it from feeling like just another Cowboys showcase. Dallas on Thanksgiving is always a scene. Dallas against Philadelphia on Thanksgiving is the version with a little more venom.
7. New England Patriots at Seattle Seahawks (Week 1: Wednesday, Sept. 9 at 8:20 PM ET)
Drake Maye probably does not need anyone to remind him what happened in February, but Seattle will be happy to do it anyway. The Seahawks sacked him six times in Super Bowl LX, beat New England 29-13 and spent most of the night making the Patriots’ offense look like it was playing uphill. Now the Super Bowl rematch will kick off the new season at Lumen Field, where it will be even louder and will only get worse if Mike Macdonald’s defense starts hunting again.
New England can point to real reasons this should look different. Maye was playing through a shoulder injury in the Super Bowl. Josh McDaniels has months to adjust after Seattle’s pressure packages wrecked the first plan. The Patriots also spent the offseason trying to fix the protection issues that left Maye taking hits instead of pushing the ball downfield.
Many NFL fans say the Patriots got to February on a soft schedule and in a weak AFC. If this New England core wants to be treated like the start of something real instead of a one-year dream run, this is the kind of game it has to play differently to set the tone for this season.
8. Kansas City Chiefs at San Francisco 49ers (Week 16: Sunday, Dec. 27 at 4:25 PM ET)
Chiefs-49ers doesn’t have the Super Bowl rematch label anymore, but that history still hangs over it. San Francisco has spent the last decade building teams good enough to win the whole thing, only to keep running into Patrick Mahomes at the worst possible time. Kyle Shanahan has had answers for almost everyone else. Against Kansas City, the final answer has always been missing.
This version has a different wrinkle with Mahomes coming off the torn ACL. The 49ers have the kind of front that can test how comfortable he really is moving around, especially if Nick Bosa is forcing him off his spot and Fred Warner is cleaning up everything underneath. Brock Purdy does not need to out-Mahomes Mahomes, but he does need to keep San Francisco out of the kind of slow offensive stretches that have killed the 49ers in these games before.
This time, the 49ers get Kansas City at home with a roster that should still believe it belongs in the Super Bowl conversation. At some point, if San Francisco wants the Mahomes problem to stop defining the Shanahan era, it has to beat him when the whole league is watching.
9. Green Bay Packers at Chicago Bears (Week 16: Friday, Dec. 25 at 1 PM ET)
Packers-Bears finally feels like one of the NFL’s best rivalries again. Green Bay spent years treating this matchup like a scheduled win, but Caleb Williams changed the temperature last season with two comeback wins at Soldier Field. The regular-season meeting looked like a wrap for the Packers before Williams dragged Chicago back late and threw a game-winning bomb to DJ Moore in overtime. The playoff game was even more dramatic, as the Bears were down 21-3 at halftime in the Wild Card Round before Williams led a second-half rally that knocked the Packers out.
The Packers will probably spend all offseason replaying those games and wondering how they let both get away. Even without the revenge angle, there’s plenty of star power in the next chapter of this rivalry. Williams and Ben Johnson gave Chicago an offense with real teeth, while Green Bay still has Jordan Love, Josh Jacobs and Jayden Reed on the other side.
Soldier Field will be unbearable for this one, in the best way. The Bears finally have a quarterback who gives their fans something real to yell about, and the Packers have to walk back into the place where they let their season slip out of their hands.
10. Baltimore Ravens at Cincinnati Bengals (Week 17: Thursday, Dec. 31 at 8:15 PM ET)
Bengals-Ravens was already nasty enough before Trey Hendrickson crossed the line. Cincinnati spent years watching him ruin drives for other teams, then let the contract situation drag out until he ended up in Baltimore. Now one of the best pass-rushers in football gets to line up against Joe Burrow twice a year, wearing the uniform Bengals fans least wanted to see him in.
There is plenty going on even without the revenge angle. Burrow and Lamar Jackson are both coming off injury-frustrated seasons, and neither team made the playoffs last year. Baltimore also has Jesse Minter taking over for John Harbaugh, while Zac Taylor enters the season with the kind of pressure that tends to build fast in Cincinnati if the Bengals start slow.
The AFC North usually does not need extra bitterness, but this one gets it anyway. Hendrickson returning to his old stadium to hunt Burrow is the easy headline, but the bigger piece is that Bengals-Ravens suddenly feels like two teams trying to prove they are not slipping out of the AFC’s top tier.