By JACK BEZANTS, US DEPUTY SPORTS EDITOR
Published: 20:26 EDT, 17 March 2026 | Updated: 20:34 EDT, 17 March 2026
The 2026 NFL season is expected to begin with the Super Bowl champions Seattle Seahawks playing on a Wednesday night, it has emerged.
The schedule for the new season won't be confirmed for at least another six weeks but reports have emerged that the NFL are bringing forward the first game due to their expanding overseas schedule.
The Seahawks will open the season at home on September 9 before the San Francisco 49ers play the Los Angeles Rams in Melbourne, Australia on the Thursday, the day the season usually begins.
The move, first reported by the Wall Street Journal, also means that the NFL will not be staging a game on the Friday of opening week.
The Australia game has been the source of some controversy among NFL teams.
On Super Bowl week the star running back for the 49ers, Christian McCaffrey said he thought Australia was too far to go to play a game.
The Seattle Seahawks will start the 2026 NFL season on a Wednesday, it has been claimed
'Australia's pretty far,' he said. 'I’d love to see how the schedule would work. Transparently, that might be a little too far.
'You have to find another way to do that. It’d be really cool . . . we don’t care where we play, we’ll show up and play, but Australia, what’s that flight, 20 hours or something?'
Soon after, it emerged that the 49ers were the team that had been scheduled to face the Rams in Australia. Perhaps McCaffrey would have been pleased to learn the flight was 16 hours, not 20.
If the move is confirmed by the NFL, it will be just the second time in 75 years that a league season has started on a Wednesday.
The Seahawks won the Super Bowl against the New England Patriots in early February, recording a commanding 29-13 win.
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