NFL Kickoff

NFL Kickoff Game is the name given to the first game of the National Football League (NFL) regular season. A single game is held, preceded by a concert and other ceremonies. This first game of the season is usually scheduled for the Thursday following Labor Day in early September. An exception was made in 2012, when the game was moved to Wednesday to prevent conflicts with the acceptance speech of the Democratic National Convention. Although the Kickoff Game is typically played on Thursday night, the league treats it separately from the Thursday Night Football games during the rest of the season and as such it has been broadcast in the United States on a different network or streaming service than the one that holds the rights to Thursday Night Football.

NFL Kickoff was introduced for the 2002 season. From 2004 onward, the current Super Bowl champion has hosted the Kickoff Game with a couple of exceptions—in 2013, the defending champion Baltimore Ravens opened on the road because of a conflict with a previously scheduled Orioles baseball game the same day, and in 2019, the defending champion New England Patriots did not play at all in the Kickoff Game as the league instead scheduled the Green Bay Packers and the Chicago Bears for that game to celebrate its 100th season of operation. Since the NFL began it, the home team has won all but six matchups (2002, 2012, 2017, 2019, 2022, and 2023).