Los Angeles (United States) (AFP) – NFL teams will each have a salary cap above $300 million for the first time, the league said Friday, as American football continues to enjoy explosive growth. The league’s annual per-team salary cap is calculated based on league revenues, which have sky-rocketed thanks to lucrative TV, licensing, and sponsorship deals in recent years.
“NFL clubs were informed today that the salary cap for the ’26 season will jump $22 million per club to $301.2 million,” said league spokesman Brian McCarthy. “Tremendous growth,” he posted on social media. Around 90 of the 100 most-watched live telecasts in the US each year are football—mainly NFL, plus a handful of college games. This month’s Super Bowl between the Seattle Seahawks and the New England Patriots was watched by 124.9 million viewers—the second-most watched show in US history, behind the previous year’s Super Bowl. A game on Thanksgiving Day last year between the Kansas City Chiefs and Dallas Cowboys shattered regular-season TV records, with an average audience of 57.23 million.
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The 2025 regular season as a whole averaged 18.7 million viewers per game—the second-highest on record. The cap was introduced in 1994, determining how much each team can spend on players’ salaries and intended to keep the league competitive. It is calculated through a formula agreed upon with the NFL Players Association as part of their collective bargaining agreement. The cap was initially set at $34.6 million and reached $150 million in 2016. It has doubled in the decade since.
On top of the cap, there will be an additional $77.6 million per team for player benefits, which includes performance-based pay and benefits for retired players. That lifts total per club player costs for the 2026 campaign to $378.8 million—or more than $12 billion across the entire NFL.
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