It’s the playoffs. The Green Bay Packers are going to play the Chicago Bears. This will probably be my only post this week talking about the 2026 regular season, but I do want to talk about the Packers’
2026 schedule just a little bit, considering that their opponents are now locked in.
If you missed it, here’s who Green Bay will be taking on next year:
Packers 2026 Home Games
- Chicago Bears (divisional opponent)
- Detroit Lions (divisional opponent)
- Minnesota Vikings (divisional opponent)
- Atlanta Falcons (NFC South)
- Buffalo Bills (AFC East)
- Carolina Panthers (NFC South)
- Dallas Cowboys (NFC East 2nd in standings)
- Houston Texans (AFC South 2nd in standings)
- Miami Dolphins (AFC East)
Packers 2026 Away Games
- Chicago Bears (divisional opponent)
- Detroit Lions (divisional opponent)
- Minnesota Vikings (divisional opponent)
- Los Angeles Rams (NFC West 2nd in standings)
- New England Patriots (AFC East)
- New Orleans Saints (NFC South)
- New York Jets (AFC East)
- Tampa Bay Buccaneers (NFC South)
Things change year over year, so it’s a mistake to think that the teams Green Bay will be playing in 2026 will just be a rerun of the 2025 versions of themselves again. Hell, the boogeymen going into this year were the Detroit Lions, who didn’t even make the playoffs this year, and the Philadelphia Eagles, who limped to an 11-6 season in a weak NFC East.
With that being said, the Packers do have a pretty tough schedule on paper going into next year. As it stands today, the only teams that will be facing squads with tougher records, based on win percentage, in 2026 are the Chicago Bears and the Miami Dolphins. A lot of this has to do with the strength of the 2025 NFC North, which became just the third division in NFL history that had all of its teams finish above .500 on the year. The AFC East pulled the NFC North in the schedule rotation for 2026.
The other two times this happened were in 2023 (AFC North) and in 1935 when the NFL’s West Division (Lions, Packers, Bears and Chicago Cardinals) went a combined 27-15-6.
Here’s the good news: The Packers’ away schedule will be a little easier than their home slate. In terms of strength of schedule, Green Bay will have the 4th-hardest home stretch in 2026 (based on 2025 records), but just the 11th-hardest road stretch.
That won’t mean that it’ll be easy, though. It just means tougher teams will generally be played more frequently at Lambeau Field than on the road.
Below is a chart of teams’ 2026 strength of schedule. I split them up into quadrants, so you can see the difference between home and away splits. These quadrants (clockwise, starting in the top right) are: teams that have both hard home and away slates, teams that have hard home slates but easy away slates, teams that have easy home and away slates and teams that have hard away slates but easy home slates.
In general, you want to avoid being at the top of the Y axis more than anything, because it means that you’re playing your toughest battles away from home. Congrats to the Cleveland Browns, who have an incredible “easy” home stretch in 2026 against the AFC North, Houston Texans, Indianapolis Colts, Atlanta Falcons, Carolina Panthers and Las Vegas Raiders. They lucked out more than anyone with the home/away splits.
Conversely, the New York Giants and Dallas Cowboys kind of got screwed. (But you won’t see me crying over spilt milk for either of them.)
