Christmas NFL Games 2026: Schedule and History

The 2026 Christmas Schedule

All four games belong to week 16, which has no Saturday games this year: after Friday it picks up on Sunday, December 27, and ends on Monday night. Kickoff times are Eastern; the two sources agree on every team, kickoff and stadium.

Records are visitor first, through Sunday of week 6 (92 games played; Monday night's game was not yet final). Two of the Christmas Day games are division games: Green Bay and Chicago are both 4-2, at +2 and +31 in point differential, and the Rams (2-4, -3) visit Seattle (3-3, +26). Buffalo is 5-1 (+26), one of four teams with one loss or none, with Kansas City, Minnesota and San Francisco, and Denver is 4-2 (-11). On Christmas Eve, Houston (2-4, +1) and Philadelphia (2-4, -31) have the same record. Ten weeks remain before then, so these records will change a lot by December; the standings are updated every game day.

The TV column is the listing on ESPN's public scoreboard as read on October 19. It is a single source, so treat it as the current listing rather than a guarantee.

The Exhibit

When the NFL Plays on Christmas

From 1999 to 2025 the NFL played 29 regular-season games on Christmas Day, and the day of the week decided most of it. In 11 of those 27 seasons there was no Christmas game at all, and every one of them was a year when December 25 fell on a Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday or Friday. Every Christmas that fell on a Saturday, Sunday or Monday had at least one game.

Before 2020, the only midweek Christmas with a game was 2009, when San Diego won 42-17 at Tennessee on a Friday night. The next Friday Christmas, in 2015, had none. That changed in 2020: there has been a Christmas game every year since, including two on a Wednesday in 2024 and three on a Thursday in 2025. The 2026 schedule keeps the pattern with three games on a Friday, the most for a Friday Christmas in the game log.

How Christmas Hosts Have Done

Christmas hosts won 13 and lost 16, a .448 share. In the other 6,872 regular-season games played at a home team's stadium from 1999 to 2025, hosts won .563. Every Christmas game in the period was played at the home team's stadium, and none ended in a tie.

Most of that gap goes away once you ask which team was better that season, counting each side's other games. When the host had the better record, it won 9 of 13 on Christmas (.692), close to the .713 such hosts won in other games. When the visitor had the better record, the host won 4 of 14 (.286), against .411 in other games, and the hosts lost both games between teams with equal records. Those are very small samples: one or two results the other way would close most of the gap. The Thanksgiving page found the same pattern in 73 games.

The holiday has not changed scoring much: 45.0 points per game on Christmas against 44.2 across all regular-season games of 1999-2025. Twelve of the 29 were division games, and 14 were decided by eight points or fewer. The short week is newer. In 7 of the 29 games both teams came in on four or five days' rest, all of them in 2009, 2020, 2024 and 2025, and the hosts won 2 of those 7. That is too few games to say anything about short rest on its own; the Thursday-night page looks at short weeks across the whole schedule.

The 2026 Teams' Christmas History

• Denver and Kansas City have played on Christmas Day five times each in the period, the most of any team. Denver is 3-2, and every one of those games was on the road, so Buffalo's visit is Denver's first Christmas Day home game since at least 1999.
• Buffalo and Seattle have not played on Christmas Day in the period. Both make their first appearance in the game log this year.
• Green Bay at Chicago continues a Christmas pairing: the Bears won 24-17 at Green Bay in 2005, and the Packers won 35-21 at home in 2011. This is the first of the three at Soldier Field. Green Bay is 3-1 on Christmas Day overall.
• The Rams have one Christmas Day game in the period, a 51-14 win over Denver in 2022, the widest Christmas margin since 1999.
• Houston and Philadelphia play on Christmas Eve, not Christmas Day. Houston lost both of its Christmas Day home games, 34-6 to Pittsburgh in 2017 and 31-2 to Baltimore in 2024; Philadelphia won all three of its, in 2006, 2017 and 2023.
• Christmas Eve is usually a full Saturday or Sunday slate: 99 games in 13 seasons since 1999. A Thursday-night Christmas Eve game has happened once before in the period, in 2015, when Oakland beat San Diego 23-20.

What Comes After

Playing on a Friday leaves a long gap to the next game. Seven of the eight 2026 Christmas Eve and Christmas Day teams get more rest than their next opponent: Chicago hosts Detroit on Sunday, January 3, with 9 days against 6, and Philadelphia plays at San Francisco the same day with 10 against 7. Buffalo, Denver, the Rams and Seattle all play on the road that Sunday with 9 days against 7. The exception is Green Bay, which hosts Houston on Monday night, January 4, with 10 days against Houston's 11.

History says not to expect much from that. Christmas Day teams from 1999 to 2025 went 30-26 in their next game. From each team's record in its season's other games, with the usual home edge, they would have been expected to win 31.1. The same check on Thanksgiving teams also came out close to expected. To see how the Christmas results could move the playoff races, you can pick those games and the rest of the season in the playoff picker.

What This Page Does Not Show

• Who will win. The page gives schedules, records and history, not picks.
• Games before 1999. The game log used here starts in 1999, so "first" means first since then.
• Why the league schedules Christmas the way it does. The pattern above is what the schedule shows, not the league's stated reasoning.
• Records as of the holiday. The 2026 records are through Sunday of week 6, ten weeks early.

Method and Sources

Christmas Day = every regular-season game dated December 25, 1999-2025 (29 games); Christmas Eve = December 24 (99)
better record = winning percentage in the team's other regular-season games that season (the game itself excluded,
                ties count half)
other games   = every other regular-season game at the home team's stadium, 1999-2025 (6,872; neutral sites left out)
short rest    = both teams on four or five days since their previous game (7 Christmas games)
next game     = each Christmas Day team's following regular-season game (56)
expected wins = log5 from the two teams' records in their other games, plus a home edge of .56 when one team is at home

The script make_christmas_2026_chart.py checks the 2026 schedule against both sources, computes the records from the frozen game log, finds every Christmas game, splits the results, computes the next-game expectation, draws the exhibit and asserts every number on this page.

Sources: the nflverse schedule and game log, pulled 9:38 am ET on October 19, 2026, and the ESPN public scoreboard for December 24-26, 2026, read the same morning. Records are through the Sunday games of October 18.

Further reading

• Thanksgiving NFL Games 2026: the other holiday slate, and 73 games of history
• Reading the 2026 Schedule: rest edges, short weeks and odd days
• Home-Field Advantage in the NFL Is Shrinking: how much the home stadium is worth in general
• Does Rest Matter in the NFL?: rest edges across the whole schedule
• 2026 NFL Standings: updated every game day