The 2026 NFL season is about to begin, and right off the bat, there will be a Super Bowl rematch between the Seattle Seahawks and the New England Patriots. But unlike in many previous years, the opening game will not take place on Thursday—it’s scheduled for Wednesday.

About seven months after the Super Bowl between the Seattle Seahawks and the New England Patriots, the 2026 NFL season kicks off with an immediate rematch between the two teams. The champions from Seattle will host the visitors from Foxborough in the regular season opener.

But unlike tradition, the season won’t begin with a game on Thursday night (U.S. time). Instead, the game between the Seahawks and the Patriots in Seattle will take place on Wednesday evening—which means late Wednesday night into Thursday morning in Germany.

An NFL season opener on a Wednesday isn’t entirely new; the last time this happened was in 2012, when the then-reigning Super Bowl champions, the New York Giants, also hosted the Dallas Cowboys on a Wednesday. Since then, however, Thursday has been the traditional start day. So what’s different this year?

The reason lies in the first game in Australian history to be part of the NFL season. It will feature the San Francisco 49ers and the Los Angeles Rams, taking place one day after the opening game between the Seahawks and the Patriots.

No overlap between the opening game and the Melbourne Game

Despite the massive time difference, the kickoff times are nearly identical. In Seattle, the game kicks off on Wednesday at 8:20 p.m. Eastern Time (5:20 p.m. local time), while the Rams-49ers game begins on Thursday at 8:35 p.m. Eastern Time. In Melbourne, where the game is being played, it will be Friday morning.

So if the NFL had kept the opening game in its usual Thursday slot, it would have directly overlapped with the Melbourne Game.

Which naturally raises the question: Why didn’t the NFL simply move the game in Australia back one day—to Friday evening U.S. time or Saturday morning Australian time?

For one thing, the league’s hands were legally tied. The “Sports Broadcast Act” generally protects Fridays and Saturdays in the U.S. from NFL broadcasts so that the focus on those days can remain on high school and college football.

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Admittedly, this rule is now sometimes relaxed in exceptional cases, such as on Black Friday—the Friday after Thanksgiving. But normally, Fridays remain off-limits.

Furthermore, the date also offers significant advantages for the operators of the Melbourne Cricket Ground, the stadium hosting the game between the Rams and the Niners. This allows them to fully utilize the “MCG” on a Friday without conflicting with the weekend’s sports schedule.

Another important reason why the NFL didn’t want to schedule the Australia game on Friday is the preparation time for Week 2. Due to the enormous time difference and potential jet lag, both teams’ preparations for the following week could have been severely disrupted.

Holding the game a day earlier works in the Rams’ and 49ers’ favor, allowing for an earlier return trip and thus better acclimatization to their home time zone.