Jacksonville Jaguars 2026 Schedule Released: Browns in Week 1 Home Opener

The Jacksonville Jaguars learned the full layout of their 2026 NFL season on May 14, with the league's schedule release placing the franchise's home opener against the Cleveland Browns on September 13 at EverBank Stadium. The matchup will mark the first game of the Liam Coen era under new head coach hire, and the first regular-season meeting between the Jaguars and Browns in Jacksonville since 2022.

The schedule includes 17 regular-season games over an 18-week stretch, with the bye week falling in Week 12. Jacksonville will play 10 home games once the international slate is factored in, including the team's annual London appearance in Week 5. The road portion of the calendar features five trips to AFC opponents and three NFC South road games, with the season closing on January 3, 2027 against the Indianapolis Colts.

For a franchise that finished 4-13 in 2025 and parted ways with head coach Doug Pederson in early January, the schedule release marked the second major calendar moment of the new regime's first offseason. The first was Coen's hiring on January 24 after one season as offensive coordinator for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. According to the team's introductory press release, owner Shad Khan framed the hiring as a long-term commitment to player development and quarterback growth around Trevor Lawrence.

Opening Stretch: Browns, Bengals, and Texans

The Week 1 home opener against Cleveland kicks off at 1 p.m. ET on CBS. The Browns enter the matchup with a new offensive system under second-year head coach Jonathan Gannon's coordinator hires, and quarterback Deshaun Watson, who returned to active practice in March after his second consecutive Achilles surgery. According to the league's broadcast assignments, the game will be the early national window for CBS, projected to reach 60 percent of US television markets.

Week 2 sends Jacksonville to Cincinnati on September 20 for a 1 p.m. kickoff against the Bengals. The matchup pairs Lawrence with Joe Burrow in what figures to be one of the more anticipated quarterback duels of the early season, given the offseason work both passers have done with new coordinators. Cincinnati hired former Atlanta Falcons coordinator Zac Robinson as its offensive coordinator after Brian Callahan left for the Tennessee Titans head coaching position in 2024.

The Jaguars then host the Houston Texans in Week 6 at EverBank Stadium on October 11, the team's second AFC South divisional matchup of the season. The Texans visit Jacksonville with a divisional-round playoff appearance in 2025 and a roster that returned the bulk of its starters. The Coen-versus-Houston-defensive-coordinator-Matt-Burke dynamic will be a recurring storyline through the year given Coen's previous work against Burke in college.

The London Game

Jacksonville's annual London appearance falls in Week 5 against the Philadelphia Eagles at Wembley Stadium on October 4. The 9:30 a.m. ET kickoff will be broadcast on NFL Network. It will be the Jaguars' 12th consecutive year hosting a game in London, and the seventh time the franchise has played at Wembley specifically rather than at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium. Khan, who owns Premier League club Fulham, has consistently identified the London game as a strategic priority for the franchise.

The Eagles enter the matchup as the reigning Super Bowl LX champions after defeating the Buffalo Bills in February. Quarterback Jalen Hurts and the Philadelphia offensive line, anchored by All-Pro left tackle Jordan Mailata, present the most demanding Week 5 challenge any AFC South team will face. According to the team's international travel plans, the Jaguars will depart Jacksonville on Thursday, October 1, and return immediately after the game to begin Week 6 preparation.

The trip will be the Jaguars' only international game of 2026, despite earlier speculation that the franchise might host a second European fixture in Munich. The league opted to award Munich to Tampa Bay this season and concentrate Berlin's first NFL game with the same franchise. Jacksonville's London commitment continues through at least 2029 under an agreement extended in 2024.

The Lawrence Factor

The schedule places significant pressure on Lawrence to produce in his sixth professional season. The former No. 1 overall pick is coming off a season in which he threw for 3,654 yards with 22 touchdowns and 14 interceptions, his lowest single-season passing total since his rookie year. The Jaguars exercised the fifth-year option on Lawrence's rookie deal in May 2024 and signed him to a five-year extension worth $275 million two months later, making him one of the highest-paid quarterbacks in the league.

Coen's offense will look meaningfully different from what Lawrence ran under former coordinator Press Taylor. The new system, drawn from Coen's work in Tampa Bay and previously at the Los Angeles Rams under Sean McVay, emphasizes play-action passing off wide-zone runs and uses condensed receiver splits to attack the middle of the field. According to the team's offseason program release, Lawrence has been at the facility every day since the program began on April 8, with most of his on-field time spent working with new quarterbacks coach Mark Brunell.

Wide receiver Brian Thomas Jr., the 2025 NFL Offensive Rookie of the Year, returns as the centerpiece of the receiving group after catching 87 passes for 1,282 yards as a rookie. Veteran wideout Christian Kirk re-signed on a two-year extension in March, and second-round pick Travis Hunter Jr.-the Heisman Trophy winner from Colorado-was selected at No. 38 to add a third receiving option. Tight end Brenton Strange takes on a featured role after the team released Evan Engram in February.

The Schedule's Difficulty

The Jaguars' 2026 strength of schedule comes in at .533, the eighth-toughest slate in the NFL based on opponents' combined 2025 winning percentages. The high mark reflects Jacksonville's pairings against the AFC North, the NFC East, and an AFC South division that placed two teams in the 2025 playoffs. Five of the Jaguars' opponents finished above .500 in 2025, and three made the conference's divisional round.

The middle stretch of the schedule looks the most demanding. From Week 6 through Week 11, Jacksonville plays Houston, Pittsburgh, Dallas, Las Vegas, the New York Giants, and Tennessee. Four of those games come against AFC opponents, with the Cowboys and Giants serving as the NFC matchups. The Steelers game in Week 7 is currently scheduled as a road trip to Pittsburgh, with a 4:25 p.m. ET kickoff on CBS as the national late window.

Jacksonville will face only one team that finished worse than the Jaguars in 2025: the Las Vegas Raiders, who went 4-13 in head coach Antonio Pierce's second season. That Week 9 matchup at Allegiant Stadium on November 1 may represent the cleanest get-well game on the Jaguars' calendar. Otherwise, every opponent on the schedule finished at .500 or better in the previous season.

What Coen Said About the Year Ahead

Coen addressed the schedule release in a brief statement issued by the team. According to the release, the head coach said the staff would focus on the Browns rather than the broader calendar, but acknowledged that the prime-time and international games would shape how the offseason workload was distributed across position groups. He noted that the team had already begun travel planning for the London trip in coordination with the league's international office.

The Jaguars have one prime-time appearance on the schedule beyond the international game. Jacksonville hosts the Tennessee Titans on Thursday Night Football in Week 13, a December 3 game at EverBank Stadium that will be broadcast on Amazon Prime Video. The matchup will be the Jaguars' first Thursday Night Football appearance since 2023 and the first divisional Thursday game for the franchise since 2021.

The schedule also includes a Saturday game in Week 16 against the Pittsburgh Steelers at home. The December 19 contest, kicking off at 1 p.m. on NFL Network, falls in the league's late-season Saturday window that includes games eliminated from prime-time consideration. Jacksonville's other notable date is Week 14 at Buffalo on December 13, a 1 p.m. ET game against a Bills team that has eliminated the Jaguars from playoff contention in two of the past three seasons.

What's Next at EverBank Stadium

The next major event on the Jaguars' offseason calendar is mandatory minicamp from June 16 through June 18, the final on-field work before training camp opens July 22 in Jacksonville. The team will hold open practices at the Miller Electric Center practice fields, with several sessions scheduled to be open to fans for the first time since the building opened in 2023.

EverBank Stadium itself is in the early phase of a $1.4 billion renovation that began in February. According to the team's facility update, the project will not affect 2026 home games but will require the franchise to play part of the 2027 and 2028 seasons at neutral sites while the bowl is reconfigured. The current schedule's three home preseason games and 10 home regular-season games will all be played at EverBank Stadium as currently configured.

The Jaguars enter the season with the franchise's most coordinated effort to position Lawrence for a long career. Coen, the new coaching staff, the receiving corps additions, and a schedule that begins with a winnable opener combine to give the franchise its clearest path back to relevance since the 2022 division-winning year. The first measure of that path arrives on September 13, when the Browns visit Jacksonville for the regular-season opener.

Northeast Florida Fan Response

The schedule release also drove a meaningful uptick in single-game ticket sales at EverBank Stadium. The Jaguars reported approximately 21,000 tickets sold within the first 24 hours of the public on-sale window, with the Bengals game in Week 2 and the Steelers Saturday matinee in Week 16 accounting for the bulk of the early demand. The team's season-ticket renewal rate held at 88 percent through May, slightly above the franchise's five-year average and reflective of the offseason interest in Coen's coaching staff.

Local broadcast partner Action News Jax and the Jaguars' in-house production team released a coordinated schedule-day digital package that included a video walk-through of the slate with linebacker Devin Lloyd and tight end Brenton Strange. According to the team's content release, the video reached more than 1.4 million views across team-owned channels within 48 hours, the highest reach of any Jaguars schedule-release content in franchise history.

The Duval-area hotel and restaurant industries also benefit from the home schedule's structure. Visit Jacksonville released a preliminary economic impact study that projected $112 million in direct visitor spending across the 10 regular-season home dates, with the highest-revenue dates being the Eagles preseason game on August 16 and the Steelers Saturday matinee on December 19. The London game does not count toward the Visit Jacksonville home-game projections but does generate separate revenue through the franchise's international media rights and the team's portion of the league-allocated London game stipend. The Steelers Saturday matinee in particular is expected to attract a heavy contingent of Pittsburgh fans traveling to North Florida, a pattern that has held in past December matchups between the two franchises.