The first game of the NFL season is usually played on a Thursday night, but that won't be happening this year. For just the second time in league history, the NFL will be kicking off on a Wednesday, so be sure to mark your calendar for 8:20 p.m. ET on Sept. 9.
Opening the season on a Wednesday is so rare that the league has been doing its best over the past couple of weeks to remind people exactly when the game will be played.
The opening game between the Seahawks and Patriots will be televised by NBC, which ended up taking its two lead NFL announcers -- Mike Tirico and Cris Collinsworth -- and throwing them in a commercial with the Hump Day camel in order to remind everyone that the first game of the year is being played on a Wednesday.
So why in the world did the NFL decide to move the opener to Wednesday this year? Glad you asked.
Why we're getting a rare Wednesday opener
The winner of the Super Bowl generally hosts the Thursday night opener in the following season, but the NFL made an exception this year due to the game in Australia.
The Rams and 49ers will be kicking off at 10:35 a.m. Australian time on Friday, but due to the time difference, that will be a Thursday night kickoff in the United States. The NFL still wanted to make sure the defending champs would officially play the first game of the season, so the league decided to move the Seahawks' game to Wednesday.
The NFL is going into its 107th season, and over that span, the league has only opened the season with a Wednesday game one other time. That came in 2012 when the NFL put the Cowboys-Giants opener on a Wednesday night so that it wouldn't conflict with Barack Obama's acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention. According to Pro Football Reference, there have only been two other seasons where a Wednesday game was played in Week 1 (1933, 1948), but it wasn't the opening game of the season.
The Giants earned the right to host the opener in 2012 after beating the Patriots in the Super Bowl, which is exactly what the Seahawks did to earn the NFL opener this year.
Why we could see more Wednesday openers
The NFL's decision to put a game in Australia definitely won't be a one-time thing. Earlier this year, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell said that the league will be coming back on a regular basis.
"There's no question that we're going to be playing here again," Goodell said. "Our view is that we're coming here for the long term. We don't come as a one-off. This isn't a circus. This is something that's an investment in this market and we believe that this is long term and will be great for the NFL long term."
Due to the time difference between Australia and the United States, there's good chance that we'll only see these games played in Week 1, and if that's the case, the NFL could end up sticking with the schedule they've set this year. That would mean putting the defending Super Bowl champ in a Wednesday night opener followed by a game in Australia on Thursday night.
Why there's no Friday game in Week 1 this year
For that past two seasons, the NFL scheduled a Friday game in Week 1, but that won't happen this year.
Under the Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961, the NFL isn't allowed to televise any games on Friday or Saturday from the second weekend in September through the second weekend in December (Those two days have been earmarked for high school and college football). This is why you don't see any Saturday games on the NFL schedule until late in the season.
The NFL always kicks off after Labor Day, which created a scheduling issue for the league this year when it comes to Friday games. The first Friday on the NFL calendar is Friday, Sept. 11, but that will be the second Friday in September and the league isn't allowed to play on that day.
The NFL can schedule a Friday (or Saturday) game during the first weekend of September, and that option is available when Labor Day falls on Sept. 1, 2 or 3, which happened in both 2024 and 2025. After this year, the holiday won't fall on one of those three dates again until 2029, so that will likely be the next time we see a Friday game in Week 1. At that point, it'd be possible for the NFL to schedule a game on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday night as part of a potential blockbuster opening week.
