We now know which team the Detroit Lions will close out their 2026 season with.
The report comes from a game not even involving the Lions. Ben Goessling of the Minnesota Star Tribune reported on Wednesday night that the Minnesota Vikings will host the Chicago Bears for their Week 18 regular season finale.
Because every Week 18 game is now a divisional game, we can easily deduce that the Detroit Lions will close out the 2026 regular season against the Green Bay Packers.
At this point, we don’t know which
team will host the other. Both the Lions and the Packers finished last season on the road and had home Week 18 finales in 2024.
What’s particularly interesting about this matchup is the fact that despite there only being divisional regular season finales, the Lions and Packers haven’t closed out a season against each other since the iconic Sunday night game in 2022 when Detroit—with nothing to play for—kicked Green Bay out of the playoff race with a 20-16 win. That game ended a long tenure of Lions/Packers finales. The two teams played against each other in the final game of the season six times out of a seven-year stretch from 2016-2022.
All-time, the Packers hold a pretty definitive 108-78-7 record in the historic rivalry between the two teams, but the recent results have been much more competitive. Since Dan Campbell took over the Lions in 2021, Detroit holds a 6-4 record over Matt LaFleur and the Packers. Additionally, the Lions have won every single season finale under Campbell—five straight.
You can catch all of the latest Detroit Lions schedule leaks here. The full schedule is expected to drop at 7:30 p.m. ET on Thursday night.
