Packers-Bears game in Week 5 flexed to Noon Central kickoff

When the NFL released its 2026 regular season schedule, one of the premier games on the docket was in Week 5 when the Green Bay Packers host the Chicago Bears. With the two teams splitting the 2025 regular season series and playing a thriller in the Wild Card round, FOX chose to make the first of the two matchups between the NFL’s oldest rivals one of the network’s priorities, claiming it for the late afternoon “Game of the Week” timeslot at 3:25 PM Central time.

Through three weeks, however, that decision appears to have backfired. The Packers have stumbled to a 1-2 record, barely eking out their sole win in overtime against the New York Jets, while the Bears will not have the services of starting quarterback Caleb Williams for a few more weeks as he works through a hamstring strain.

That backfire is now fully complete, as the NFL has flexed that Packers-Bears game out of the late afternoon time slot and into the early afternoon. Kickoff for the game at Lambeau Field will now be at 12:00 Noon Central Time, leaving FOX with a more desirable 49ers-Seahawks matchup to send out to a national audience as the late game.

This also means that the Packers’ new “Rivalries” uniforms will get a much smaller viewership. This is the game when the team is scheduled wear those uniforms for the first time, while the Bears will debut theirs in the rematch at Soldier Field on Christmas Day.

Moving this game also makes this only the second time in over 20 years that both Packers-Bears games will kick off at Noon Central, though the holiday rematch will still get a national broadcast. That oddity also happened in 2024 — though the teams’ week 18 time slot was not set until the very end of the season — but had not been the case prior to that since 2004, a year that also featured a season-ending matchup.