NFL Streaming Guide 2026: Which Services Do You Need?

The NFL hasn't lived on one channel, or even one type of service, for years now. Every season the broadcast rights get spread a little further across cable networks, streaming apps, and a couple of newcomers that didn't carry a single football game five years ago. That's great for the league's bank account and confusing for everyone trying to figure out what they're supposed to pay for.

Here's the short version: no single subscription covers the whole 2026 season. But you definitely don't need all seven NFL-related services either, and the right combination depends heavily on which games you care about. Below is what each broadcast window requires, what it costs, and where common advice gets it wrong. If you want the seasonal math weighed against everything else your household already pays for, that's exactly what a Stream Engine Planner subscription rotation strategy does.

Thursday Night Football: Prime Video

Amazon has the exclusive rights to Thursday Night Football through 2032, and for most households this is the simplest piece of the puzzle. You don't need a full Amazon Prime membership to watch. The standalone Prime Video plan, at $8.99 a month with no other Prime perks attached, gets you every Thursday game. If you already pay for full Prime at $14.99 a month or $139 a year, it's included at no extra cost. But if football is the only reason you'd sign up, the cheaper standalone plan is the one to get, not the $14.99 bundle that some guides default to recommending.

If you're not a Prime member yet, Amazon offers a 30-day free trial to eligible customers, which is enough to cover the preseason matchups before the games that count. Preseason coverage on Prime Video starts August 27, 2026, and Prime Video carries 16 games in 2026, starting September 17, including marquee windows on Black Friday, Christmas Eve, and New Year's Eve. Once the regular season wraps, Prime Video also carries an exclusive NFL Wild Card playoff game, on either January 16 or 17, 2027.

The league and Amazon typically don't confirm the exact matchup and date until the regular season ends, but it's included for Prime members in the US only at no extra cost.

There's a way around paying for Prime Video at all, though it only helps some fans. Every Thursday game, the holiday games included, also airs on a regular broadcast station in the two competing teams' home markets. So if the matchup you want involves your local team, an antenna picks it up free and Prime Video isn't needed for that night. For most fans this only lines up a few Thursdays a season, but if your team plays a lot of prime-time games it can be the difference between needing Prime Video and skipping it.

Note that Amazon Family is the only way to share Prime benefits now, and it includes Prime Video. One other adult at the same home address can stream Thursday Night Football through a shared membership. What it won't cover is anyone outside that address. Amazon retired its old shipping-only Prime Invitee program in October 2025, so there's no version of Prime sharing left that hands someone free shipping without also giving them Prime Video. If you're not part of the primary member's Amazon Family, you'd need your own personal Prime membership or a standalone Prime Video subscription.

Amazon Business Prime is a separate case entirely and doesn't include Prime Video at all, so a Business Prime account won't get you the game either.

Sunday afternoon: CBS, Fox, and Paramount+

Sunday afternoon is still split the old-fashioned way. CBS carries AFC-leaning matchups and Fox carries NFC-leaning ones, and both are free over the air if you get local channels. If you want to stream instead, Paramount+ carries live NFL on CBS, and it works on the ad-supported Essential plan at $8.99 a month, not just the pricier $13.99 Premium plan.

The main trade-off is small but important to note: Essential streams your local CBS channels live only during the games rather than functioning as a full-time local CBS channel the rest of the week.

Fox recently created Fox One, at $19.99 a month or $199.99 a year, which streams Fox's Sunday afternoon NFL coverage, including the national Game of the Week and regional matchups, with no cable required. It replaced Fox's old cable Fox Sports app in 2025, so if you're picking a single option for Fox games without an antenna, Fox One is the direct route, not a live TV bundle.

Sunday Night Football: NBC and Peacock

NBC's Sunday Night Football is free over the air, and Peacock is the streaming path if you want it without an antenna. Here's where a naming coincidence trips people up: Peacock has its own affordable Select plan at $8.99 a month, and it doesn't include live sports, full stop. You need Peacock Premium at $12.99 a month (or $129.99 a year) to get Sunday Night Football streamed live. Premium Plus, at $19.99 a month (or $199.99 a year), adds ad-free content but it doesn't add anything for football specifically, so it's not worth paying extra for it if NBC's game is your only reason to subscribe.

This is worth revisiting soon, though. NBCUniversal and YouTube announced a partnership in July 2026 that changes how you can get Peacock through YouTube. Peacock Premium is becoming available as a standalone add-on through YouTube Primetime Channels later in the summer of 2026, and starting in early 2027, it's set to be bundled into YouTube Premium (the ad-free YouTube and YouTube Music subscription, a different product from YouTube TV) at no extra cost for existing subscribers.

Neither change affects anything else in this guide's numbers, and YouTube hasn't published exact terms for either rollout yet, so confirm what's live in your account before dropping a standalone Peacock subscription on the strength of an announcement alone.

Monday Night Football: ESPN Unlimited, live TV bundles, and Sling TV

It's key to note that ESPN now comes in two plans: ESPN Select and ESPN Unlimited, and only one of them carries Monday Night Football.

ESPN Select is the renamed continuation of the old ESPN+, including on-demand content, select live events that don't air on ESPN's cable networks, and ESPN Originals. However, it doesn't include ESPN's live channels.

ESPN Unlimited is the pricier plan that adds those live channels like ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNU, and the games that also air on ABC. Monday Night Football only airs on the live side of that split and Select doesn't carry it at any price.

Unlimited runs $31.99 a month or $319.99 a year. If Monday Night Football is the only reason you're subscribing, paying monthly and canceling once your interest in the season fades will usually cost less than the annual plan, since regular season itself only runs about 4 months. We've written a full breakdown of ESPN Unlimited vs ESPN Select for Monday Night Football if you want the complete cost math, including what happens if you already get ESPN through a cable or live TV provider.

If you're also getting Fox One for Sunday afternoon's NFC games, check the ESPN, FOX One Bundle before paying for both separately. It packages ESPN Unlimited with Fox One for $39.99 a month, a discount off the $51.98 those two would cost bought individually, worth roughly $144 over a year. It only works with ESPN Unlimited, not ESPN Select, and it isn't available on top of a Disney+/Hulu/ESPN bundle, so it's worth a look specifically if you'd otherwise be paying for Fox One and ESPN Unlimited as two separate subscriptions.

If you only want a single Monday night game rather than the whole season, Sling TV sells short-term access to its Orange plan, which carries the ESPN and ESPN2 channels, with no subscription or contract: a 1 Day Pass runs $4.99, a 3 Day Pass $9.99, and a 7 Day Pass $14.99. Monday Night Football airs as one national ESPN broadcast rather than a game split by local market, so it isn't subject to the kind of local blackout or designated-market restrictions that limit Sling's own CBS/Fox/NBC/ABC affiliate coverage.

A single Sling TV day pass costs a fraction of a full month of ESPN Unlimited, though it only covers that one day, not the rest of the season. Buying a 1 Day Pass for every Monday Night Football game on the 2026 schedule, all 17 of them, would run $84.83 total, still cheaper than paying for ESPN Unlimited across the roughly 4-month regular season ($127.96) and far below the $319.99 annual plan.

Watch less than all 17 games and the total drops further, since you're only paying for the Mondays you watch. What you give up is everything outside that one day: a day pass only gets you Sling's Orange plan for the day you buy it, while ESPN Unlimited covers its live channels every day of the month, not just Monday nights.

One thing to check before you pay for ESPN Unlimited separately: if your household already has Hulu + Live TV on its standard With Ads or No Ads plan, ESPN Unlimited access is already bundled in through a separate ESPN app login, at no extra cost. That means Monday Night Football is already covered. This doesn't extend to Hulu's cheaper "Live TV Only" plan, which skips the ESPN Unlimited bundle entirely, so check which specific Hulu + Live TV plan you're on before assuming you need to add ESPN Unlimited on top.

YouTube TV subscribers gained a version of that same shortcut starting in late July 2026, though the setup isn't as automatic as Hulu's. If your YouTube TV plan carries the ESPN channel, you can turn it on from the app. Google, which owns YouTubeTV, is still rolling this out gradually rather than to every subscriber at once, and full integration inside the YouTube TV app itself isn't expected until later this fall, so check your account directly rather than assuming the option is there yet.

NFL Network: now included with ESPN Unlimited

NFL Network carries a handful of exclusive regular-season games each year, mostly the International Series games played in London, Dublin, and elsewhere, plus a Week 16 doubleheader, along with the full preseason slate and year-round studio programming. ESPN bought the channel outright in 2026, and since July 30 it has been included free with ESPN Unlimited, so a subscription bought for Monday Night Football now covers these games too. NFL Network is also carried on most live TV bundles, so if you already have YouTube TV, Hulu + Live TV, or Fubo for other games, check whether the channel is in your plan before adding ESPN Unlimited for it.

Netflix's NFL coverage is bigger than just Christmas

Most coverage of Netflix's NFL deal still frames it as "the Christmas Day game", which was true for the deal's first year but understates what's on Netflix now. Netflix extended its NFL agreement by four years, through the 2029-30 season. Each season it carries an early-season game, the Wednesday night game before Thanksgiving, one or two games on Christmas Day, a game in the last week of the regular season, and the NFL Honors awards show.

For 2026, the Christmas Day lineup is a Packers vs. Bears game followed by a Bills vs. Broncos game. None of it requires an add-on. If you already have a Netflix subscription for anything else, these games come with it.

Out-of-market Sunday games: NFL Sunday Ticket

If your team doesn't play in your local market, none of the above gets you their Sunday afternoon games consistently. That's what NFL Sunday Ticket is for. It's exclusive to YouTube now, and what you pay depends less on how you buy it than on whether you've had it before.

New subscribers pay $240 for the season (or 8 payments of $30) whether they bundle it with a YouTube TV subscription or buy it standalone through YouTube Primetime Channels.

Returning subscribers pay more, and staying bundled with YouTube TV is the cheaper path: $378 for the season (or 8 payments of $47.25) bundled, vs $480 (or 8 payments of $60) for NFL Sunday Ticket on its own.

The exact cost moves around frequently based on timing and whether you're a new or returning subscriber, so check YouTube's current offer before making your final decision. Our full breakdown of whether NFL Sunday Ticket is worth it covers the plan costs, lock-in requirements, and state-by-state restrictions in more detail.

Note that NFL+, the league's own app, isn't Sunday Ticket. NFL+'s base plan, $6.99 a month, includes live out-of-market preseason games, live local and primetime regular-season and postseason games on mobile, and live audio for every game, but no full games or condensed replays at all.

Full games and condensed replays are on NFL+ Premium for $14.99 a month and not something the cheapest plan adds. Either way, neither NFL+ plan gets you your team's live out-of-market Sunday afternoon game while it's happening. If you want to watch out-of-market games live, Sunday Ticket is the only thing that does that.

Playoffs and the Super Bowl

The playoffs rotate across CBS, ESPN/ABC, Fox, and NBC depending on the round and matchup, plus an annual Wild Card game on Prime Video, which Amazon holds for the life of its NFL rights deal through 2032.

Super Bowl LXI airs February 14, 2027 on ESPN and ABC, the first time ESPN has ever broadcast the Super Bowl, so if you already have ESPN Unlimited for Monday nights, you're covered for the big game too. Broadcast rights for the Super Bowl rotate among the major networks year to year after that, so check closer to future seasons rather than assuming the same network twice in a row.

Which service covers which game

Here's the whole season in one lookup. "Live TV bundle" covers YouTube TV, Hulu + Live TV, and Fubo collectively, since all three carry the same broadcast networks and ESPN in most markets, subject to the local-channel and NBC/Peacock caveats covered above.

Swipe to see the full table →

The free(ish) option: an antenna

It's easy to skip past this while comparing streaming apps, but a basic indoor digital antenna, usually $20 to $40 one-time cost, picks up CBS, Fox, NBC, and ABC over the air in most markets for free. That covers Sunday afternoon games, Sunday Night Football, and any Monday night game that's also showing on ABC.

An antenna won't get you Thursday Night Football, the ESPN-exclusive Monday games, or out-of-market Sunday games, but if you mostly watch your local teams and don't chase every single game, it covers more of the season than most streaming guides give it credit for. Signal strength depends on distance from the broadcast tower and what's in the way, so check your specific address before assuming it'll work.

If you want it all in one place: Live TV bundles

If juggling five or six separate apps sounds worse than one bill, a live TV bundle covers most of this in a single subscription.

YouTube TV's Base Plan runs $82.99 a month and includes CBS, Fox, NBC, ABC, and ESPN in most markets, plus Sunday Ticket as an add-on. If those four networks and ESPN are all you want out of a bundle, YouTube TV also sells a cheaper Sports Plan at $64.99 a month ($54.99 for new subscribers in their first year), a smaller sports-focused channel package built around those locals and ESPN rather than the Base Plan's full lineup.

Hulu + Live TV runs $89.99 a month with similar coverage. Fubo's main live TV plan, Core, jumped to $88.99 a month in July 2026, with its top plan, Ultra, at $98.99, a direct result of the NBC pricing increase covered below.

There are two bundle-specific details to check before you buy, since they change which games you get. NBCUniversal pulled its channels from Fubo in November 2025 over a distribution dispute, and the two sides struck a new deal in June 2026 to bring NBC back, with Spanish-language networks restored first and English-language channels following in the weeks after.

Confirm NBC and Peacock content is live on Fubo in your market before counting on it for Sunday Night Football. Sling TV doesn't carry CBS at all, in any market, on any plan, and its ABC, Fox, and NBC coverage is limited to a short list of major metro areas rather than being available nationwide.

YouTube TV and Hulu + Live TV are the two with the broadest, most consistent local-channel coverage of the group. DIRECTV's real strength is regional sports networks airing local MLB games. Its own site doesn't spell out NBA and NHL regional coverage with the same detail, so check your specific market's channel lineup directly if either matters to you. If local channels matter to you, check your ZIP code against each service's current lineup rather than assuming national availability.

If your sports interest runs past the NFL, we've run the bundle-versus-standalone math for two other cases: ESPN Unlimited vs a live TV bundle for college football and a live TV bundle vs separate apps for NBA fans.

Run your free optimization → to see whether a bundle or the piece-by-piece approach costs your household less against what you already pay.

Phone and internet provider discounts: Verizon, T-Mobile, and Xfinity

Before buying anything above separately, check whether your phone or home internet plan already discounts a piece of it. This changes the math for some households more than any single service swap does.

Verizon has the biggest offer this season. Through a promotion running July 30 through September 2, 2026, Verizon is giving away a full season of NFL Sunday Ticket from YouTube, up to a $480 value, to customers who buy an eligible 5G phone on an Unlimited Ultimate or Unlimited Plus plan (either a new line or upgrading an existing one), or who switch to a qualifying Verizon Home Internet plan, including Fios, or a premium Frontier Fiber plan.

Redemption has a deadline: 60 days after your order or activation date, or December 21, 2026, whichever lands first. And the $480 isn't unconditionally yours once claimed. Verizon can take it back if you cancel the qualifying phone or internet line, or otherwise fall out of eligibility, within the first 180 days.

If you don't qualify for the free version, Verizon still sells discounted standalone Sunday Ticket to existing Verizon phone or home internet customers, $234 instead of the usual $480. That discount runs a few weeks past the giveaway, through September 22, 2026.

T-Mobile's angle is smaller but still real. Its All-In Home Internet plan, $55 a month with AutoPay and a T-Mobile phone plan, includes Paramount+ Essential and ad-supported Hulu at no extra cost, a combined $20.98-a-month value. Paramount+ Essential carries NFL on CBS, so an All-In household is already covering Sunday afternoon's CBS games without paying for Paramount+ on top of internet service.

Xfinity doesn't have a Sunday Ticket angle right now. An NFL Sunday Ticket discount for Xfinity Rewards members circulated in 2023, but that specific offer has expired and there's no sign it's back for the 2026 season, so don't go looking for it.

What Xfinity does currently sell is StreamSaver, a bundle open to existing Xfinity Internet or TV customers that packages Peacock Premium with ad-supported Netflix and Apple TV for $18 a month, compared to roughly $34 buying all three separately. That's a real discount, but only if you want Netflix and Apple TV alongside it. If Sunday Night Football is the only reason you're subscribing, standalone Peacock Premium at $12.99 a month still costs less than paying $18 for a bundle to get there.

One more Verizon perk worth knowing about: Verizon also bundles Disney+, Hulu, and ESPN for $10 a month with several myPlan plans, a real discount off the $21.99 those three would cost separately.

Carrier and ISP promotions like these change often, especially heading into a new season, so confirm what's active on your account before assuming a deal you read about is still running.

What the whole season costs

Here's the math many NFL streaming guides skip entirely: what does covering everything add up to when picking only what you need?

Buying just the five single-game services above: Prime Video, Paramount+ Essential, Fox One, Peacock Premium, and ESPN Unlimited, runs about $82.95 a month, and Netflix's NFL games likely come free if you already subscribe for anything else. That covers Thursday, Sunday afternoon (in-market, both CBS and Fox), Sunday night, Monday night, and Netflix's handful of exclusive windows. Add Sunday Ticket only if you specifically need out-of-market Sunday games, since it's the single most expensive piece by far, and most households paying for it are covering games their local market already gets on the standard package.

The YouTube TV row above uses the Sports Plan, not the pricier Base Plan, since a household that only wants NFL-relevant channels doesn't need Base Plan's extra channels either. See the Season totals section below for exact new vs. returning subscriber math on that path.

Season totals

These two paths cover the same NFL games two different ways, and shouldn't be added together, doing so double-counts the same channel access. The first path stitches together five single-purpose apps priced separately. The second leans on one YouTube TV bundle plus Prime Video for Thursday nights. Pick whichever path fits how you already watch, then read down to the new- or returning-subscriber row for Sunday Ticket pricing, based on whether you've subscribed to Sunday Ticket before. Totals use the regular season's roughly 4-month length, the same convention used for ESPN Unlimited's monthly-vs-annual math earlier in this guide.

A YouTube TV Sports Plan subscription already covers the same locals and ESPN as the pricier Base Plan, so this path pairs it with Prime Video for Thursday nights (not on YouTube TV) and a bundled Sunday Ticket.

That's the kind of decision Stream Engine Planner is built for. A seasonal lineup like this doesn't exist in isolation. It sits on top of whatever else your household already pays for the rest of the year, and whether ESPN Unlimited or a live TV bundle is worth it depends on what else you're already carrying.

Making the final decision

Start with what you watch, not the theoretical maximum service lineup. If you follow one team and they play mostly in-market Sunday games, an antenna plus maybe Paramount+ Essential covers most of a season for under $10 a month.

If you're the kind of household chasing every marquee matchup, ESPN Unlimited and NFL Sunday Ticket start making more sense, but at real cost, not the "just get everything" advice that treats every service as equally necessary.

If you're deciding whether ESPN's live plan is worth carrying past the season, our full breakdown of whether ESPN Unlimited is worth it walks through that math separately. And if you're weighing whether you even need two of the bigger streaming names side by side once football season ends, our Netflix vs Disney+ comparison covers that overlap question directly.

Before adding anything new for the season, run it through Stream Engine Planner rather than deciding in isolation. Run your free optimization → and see exactly where an NFL add-on like ESPN Unlimited or a live TV bundle fits against everything else you're already paying for.

Frequently asked questions

Do I need ESPN Unlimited or ESPN Select for Monday Night Football?

Unlimited. Select is the on-demand-only plan and doesn't carry any of ESPN's live channels, which is where Monday Night Football airs. Select runs $13.99 a month or $139.99 a year, cheaper than Unlimited, but the price doesn't matter for this question since Select doesn't carry live channels at any price. This is one of the most common mix-ups in NFL streaming coverage this season, so double check before you buy either plan.

One exception: the standard With Ads or No Ads plan of Hulu + Live TV already bundles in ESPN Unlimited access at no extra cost, but the cheaper Live TV Only plan doesn't, so check which one you have before adding ESPN Unlimited on top. YouTube TV subscribers on a plan with the ESPN channel can get it too now by linking accounts through YouTube TV's Sports settings, though that rollout is still gradual and isn't automatic the way Hulu's is.

Remember that you can also get Monday Night Football with Sling TV day passes, which often edges out to being much cheaper than ESPN Unlimited, especially if you don't need to catch every Monday game.

Can I watch Thursday Night Football without a full Amazon Prime membership?

Yes. The standalone Prime Video plan, at $8.99 a month, includes it. You don't need the $14.99 full Prime membership unless you want Prime's other shipping and shopping benefits alongside it. The standalone plan also bills monthly with no annual commitment, so subscribing for the season and canceling once it's over instead of paying for months you don't need is a real option.

Is NFL Sunday Ticket the same as NFL+?

No. Sunday Ticket gives you live out-of-market Sunday afternoon games as they happen. No other service provides that.

NFL+'s $6.99-a-month base plan doesn't include it and it doesn't include full games or condensed replays either. Those require the $14.99 NFL+ Premium plan.

Is Fubo a good option for Sunday Night Football right now?

Check before you commit, since NBCUniversal pulled its channels from Fubo in late 2025 and the two companies only reached a new deal in June 2026 to restore them gradually. Confirm live NBC and Peacock content is working in your specific market before relying on Fubo for Sunday nights.

If it isn't live yet in your area, streaming NBC's Sunday Night Football through Peacock Premium directly is the more reliable fallback while Fubo's rollout finishes.

Will Peacock be included with YouTube Premium?

Yes, starting in early 2027, per a July 2026 agreement between NBCUniversal and YouTube. Peacock Premium is set to be bundled into YouTube Premium, the ad-free YouTube and YouTube Music subscription, at no extra cost for existing subscribers.

That's a different product from YouTube TV, so it doesn't change any of the YouTube TV or Sunday Ticket costs. Peacock Premium is also becoming available as its own standalone add-on through YouTube Primetime Channels later in the summer of 2026, ahead of the bundle.

Exact terms for either rollout, including whether every YouTube Premium plan qualifies for the bundle, haven't been published yet, so confirm it's live in your account before dropping a standalone Peacock subscription.