When is the 2026 NFL trade deadline?
The 2026 NFL trade deadline is Tuesday, November 10, 2026, at 4:00 p.m. Eastern. The league's calendar puts it plainly: "All trading ends for 2026 at 4:00 p.m., New York time." It falls on the Tuesday after week 9, when 16 teams will have played nine games and the other 16 eight. If the last five deadlines are a guide, a large share of the season's trading will happen that afternoon: from 2021 to 2025, 35 of the 86 trades made during the regular season (41%) were made on deadline day itself.
Related: 2026 standings · NFL tiebreakers explained
Date from the NFL's 2026-27 calendar, read October 17, 2026. Trade history from the nflverse trade log, 2021-2025 seasons; records from the nflverse game log.
Why November 10
The deadline has sat on the Tuesday after week 9 since 2024. Before that season, NFL owners approved a proposal from the Pittsburgh Steelers to move it back one week; as NFL.com reported at the time, "Previously, the trade deadline was Tuesday after Week 8." The report gave the reason: when the schedule grew to 17 games in 2021, the deadline had stayed where it was. Proposals to push it past week 10 failed, and the same report says the league has resisted a later date for fear it would encourage tanking.
In 2026 week 9 ends with a Monday night game on November 9, so the deadline is the next afternoon. The day after, November 11, a second calendar line takes effect: players with at least four pension-credited seasons become subject to the waiver system for the rest of the regular season. Between today and the deadline there are 56 regular-season games still to play, the rest of week 6 and all of weeks 7, 8 and 9.
The Exhibit
The Last Five Deadlines
The table counts trades made between each season's first and last regular-season game. A trade is one deal, however many players and picks it involves; players and picks are counted for the deals made on deadline day.
| Season | Deadline | In-season trades | On deadline day | Players moved that day | Draft picks moved that day |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2021 | Nov. 2 (after week 8) | 13 | 4 | 6 | 5 |
| 2022 | Nov. 1 (after week 8) | 19 | 10 | 12 | 18 |
| 2023 | Oct. 31 (after week 8) | 15 | 6 | 6 | 8 |
| 2024 | Nov. 5 (after week 9) | 18 | 8 | 8 | 15 |
| 2025 | Nov. 4 (after week 9) | 21 | 7 | 9 | 12 |
In every one of the five seasons, deadline day was the single busiest trading day of the regular season, and no in-season trade is dated after it. Over the five years, 35 of 86 in-season trades came on deadline day and 46 (53%) in the final seven days. The week before that added 16 more; only 24 came two or more weeks out.
The later deadline has not yet made deadline day busier. The two seasons under the week-9 rule had 8 and 7 deadline-day trades, inside the range of the three seasons before it (4, 10 and 6). The season totals have risen, from 13 in 2021 to 21 in 2025, but five seasons are too few to say the rule change did that.
What Deadline Day Moves
The 35 deadline-day trades of 2021-2025 moved 41 players and 58 draft picks.
- Mostly defenders. 22 of the 41 players were defenders: 10 defensive linemen, 8 defensive backs and 4 linebackers. Nine were edge players, listed as defensive ends (7) or outside linebackers (2), and 7 were cornerbacks. On offense, wide receivers led with 8, then running backs with 5. One quarterback moved: Joshua Dobbs, from Arizona to Minnesota in 2023.
- Mostly late picks. Of the 57 picks with a round recorded, 43 were in rounds 4 to 7. The 58th was a conditional pick whose round the log does not record, and 6 picks in all were conditional.
- A few big prices. Four first-round picks changed hands, in three trades: a 2023 first from Miami to Denver in the 2022 trade that sent Bradley Chubb to Miami, and in 2025 two firsts from Indianapolis and one from Dallas to the Jets, in the trades for Sauce Gardner and Quinnen Williams.
Players move toward winning teams. On the day of the deal, 27 of the 41 players went to a team with a better record than the one that traded them, and 14 to a worse one. The teams that gave up players were winning .404 of their games on average; the teams that got them, .548. The playoffs followed the same line: of the 34 team-seasons that added a player on deadline day, 19 made the playoffs (56%), against 11 of the 36 that traded one away (31%) and 14 of 32 teams in a normal season (44%). That is a description of who buys, not proof that buying works: the buyers were already the better teams when they made the deals.
A Worked Example: Detroit and Minnesota, 2022
On deadline day 2022, November 1, Detroit was 1-6 and Minnesota 6-1. Detroit sent tight end T.J. Hockenson, a 2023 fourth-round pick and a conditional 2024 fourth to Minnesota for a 2023 second-round pick and a 2024 third. It is the textbook deadline deal: a player leaving a 1-6 team for a 6-1 team, picks going the other way.
The rest of the season shows why a deadline record is not a verdict. Minnesota went 7-3 after the trade and finished 13-4 and in the playoffs. Detroit went 8-2 after it and finished 9-8, out of the playoffs, but with the best record of the two over the last ten games.
The 2026 Picture
Through Thursday of week 6, 80 games have been played. The trade log used here ends with a trade dated April 17, 2026, so it holds none of this season's in-season deals, and this page does not list them. For where each team stands as the deadline approaches, the 2026 standings are updated every game day, and the tiebreakers explainer works through the ties among this year's contenders, including five AFC teams at 3-2.
The five-year pattern suggests what to watch for on November 10: most of the trading in the final days rather than the weeks before, defenders and receivers more than anyone else, late-round picks as the usual price, and players moving toward teams with better records than the ones they leave.
What This Page Does Not Show
- Whether trades worked. The playoff rates describe the teams that bought and sold; they do not isolate what any trade added.
- Contracts and the salary cap. The trade log records players and picks, not money.
- Trades before the season. Deals made before the first regular-season game, including those around the August roster cutdown, are outside the in-season count.
- Positions at the time. Positions come from the current nflverse player listing, which can differ from the role a player had when he was traded.
Method and Sources
deadline = first Tuesday after the last game of week 8 (2021-2023) or week 9 (2024-2026), from the schedule;
gives Nov 2 2021, Nov 1 2022, Oct 31 2023, Nov 5 2024, Nov 4 2025, Nov 10 2026
in-season = trade dated between the season's first and last regular-season game
trade = one trade_id in the log; its rows are the players and picks that moved
record = the team's regular-season record on the day before the deal (ties count half)
playoffs = the team appears in that season's postseason gamesThe script make_trade_deadline_chart.py checks the 2026 date and the 2023 and 2024 dates against the NFL's own text, finds each deadline in the schedule, counts the trades, joins positions, draws the exhibit and asserts every number on this page.
Sources: the NFL's 2026-27 important dates (the same line appears on the league's football operations calendar) and NFL.com's report on the 2024 change, both read October 17, 2026; the nflverse trade log and game log and the nflverse player file, pulled 8:19 am ET on October 17, 2026.
Further reading
- 2026 NFL Standings: the full table, updated every game day
- NFL Tiebreakers Explained: how ties for titles and wild cards are broken, with 2026's ties
- NFL Division Standings 2026: Games Behind: how safe each division lead has been historically
- The NFL Playoff Picture After Week 5: what week 6 can move
- The NFL's 17-Game Era: what the longer season changed
Go deeper
Want the code behind these metrics? Work through the 43-chapter NFL analytics tutorial.
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