The 2026 offseason for the NFL is going to be an absolute frenzy of player movement, and commissioner Roger Goodell is making sure of that.
The NFL is king, no matter what time of year we're talking about, and it will be a short 4 weeks between Super Bowl LX and the start of 2026 NFL free agency on March 11. And when free agency kicks off, teams are going to have even more flexibility to work with than expected initially.
The 2026 NFL salary cap figure was announced to be somewhere between $301.2 million and $305.7 million, which is up to $10 million more than has been "expected" over the last year.
2026 NFL salary cap officially skyrocketing ahead of exciting free agency
The NFL informed clubs today it is projecting a 2026 salary cap in the range of $301.2 million to $305.7 million per club, per source.
— Tom Pelissero (@TomPelissero) January 30, 2026
That would represent another significant jump from this year’s $279.2 million cap number, and nearly $100M than the $208.2M cap in 2022. pic.twitter.com/3Mr146H01C
If you're one of the many fans who has been exceedingly frustrated by the league making you jump through hoops to watch games, this is the trade-off.
The NFL has done deals to increase viewership of the game over the last handful of years, getting streaming rights deals with Netflix, Paramount+, Amazon Prime, Peacock, ESPN+, and more. The viewership for the league has been off the charts in recent years with a number of regular and postseason games setting individual records.
The Chiefs and Cowboys game on Thanksgiving drew a record 57.3 million viewers, and that game didn't even feature an eventual playoff team. The Divisional Round of the playoffs accounted for 18.7 billion hours watched globally.
And the result is that the NFL is able to boost the salary cap significantly.
Again, the expectation for most of the last year has been that the salary cap would jump to around $295 million, but we will instead be getting the first salary cap over $300 million in the history of the league. What's really wild to think about is that the salary cap just exceeded $200 million for the first time in the 2022 offseason.
It's been a rapid rise thanks to the league's TV deals over the past handful of years, and it'll make for an absolutely bananas offseason. There were so many trades in the 2025 offseason, and that should be expected to ramp up this year as teams have financial flexibility as well as the reality of the 2026 NFL Draft class being a little bit sub-par in terms of top-end talent.
It's time for every fan base to buckle in for what should be a wild ride.