The Chicago Bears, Detroit Lions, Green Bay Packers and Minnesota Vikings have all revealed new “Rivalries” uniforms for 2026, and each team will wear its version exactly once this season: at home, against a division rival.
If you saw the photos doing the rounds and wondered, just like I did, whether this is a genuine NFL thing or a one-off bit of marketing, it’s the genuine thing. It’s a real, multi-year programme run by the NFL and Nike, and this is only its second year. The nearest comparison for a non-US sports fan I can give is Manchester United’s 2026/27 third kit, an off-white Salford Lads Club tribute that trades on heritage and local pride the same way.
The NFC North “Rivalries” uniform debuts
Each club will debut its new look in a single home fixture against one of its NFC North rivals, and the four dates are already set.
Below is the full run for the division this season:
| Team | Week | Home game against |
|---|---|---|
| Green Bay Packers | 5 | Chicago Bears |
| Detroit Lions | 8 | Minnesota Vikings |
| Minnesota Vikings | 15 | Detroit Lions |
| Chicago Bears | 16 | Green Bay Packers |
The Packers will go first, in Week 5 against the Bears. The Bears close the set in Week 16, also against Green Bay, so that one pairing bookends the whole thing.
Nike x NFL Rivalries: yes, it’s a real collab
The Nike x NFL Rivalries programme launched in 2025 with eight teams from two divisions: the AFC East (Bills, Dolphins, Patriots, Jets) and the NFC West (Cardinals, Rams, 49ers, Seahawks). Each wore a one-off design during a home game against a rival, exactly as the NFC North teams will do this season.
These became Fanatics’ best-selling merchandise release to date: on launch day, Rivalries gear made up about 80% of all sales across Fanatics’ online network, including NFLShop.com. That is a large part of why the programme is back and growing rather than quietly dropped. It’s a four-year rollout, so by 2028 all divisions will have completed the programme:
| Season | Divisions joining |
|---|---|
| 2025 | AFC East, NFC West |
| 2026 | AFC South, NFC North |
| 2027 | NFC East, AFC West |
| 2028 | AFC North, NFC South |
Why the uniform only ever comes out against a division rival
In the NFL, the teams in your division are the only opponents you are guaranteed to play twice every season, once at home and once away. The league is split into eight divisions of four teams. Your three division rivals account for six of your seventeen games, home and away against each. (I’ve drawn the full map on the conferences and divisions page, and I explain how the seventeen games are built on the NFL season, explained.)
So when the league wants each team to debut a uniform against a rival, in a home game, it doesn’t have to hope the right fixture exists. It’s already on the calendar, twice.
The Bears and Packers game is the oldest one in the book
Two of the four teams, the Bears and Packers, have been playing each other since the 1920s, which makes theirs the oldest and most-played rivalry in the league. I’ve written the full story of it on the Bears–Packers rivalry page, so you can get the history here.
It’s a nice detail that the Bears chose “Monsters of the Midway”, their own decades-old nickname, as the theme of their new kit. The NFL didn’t invent these rivalries to sell uniforms. It just handed the oldest ones a fresh set of clothes.
The NFL collab is more than a commercial opportunity
Strip away the launch videos and the merchandise, and the Rivalries programme is really a nod to how the NFL is built: around divisions, and around the two games a year that turn near-neighbours into rivals.
You don’t have to buy a jersey to get the good part. You just need to know that when the Bears face Green Bay in Week 16 in something new, the reason that game exists at all is the same reason it has been played for a hundred years.
If you want the map of who sits in which division, conferences and divisions is the place to start. If you’d rather just read about the rivalries themselves, the teams hub has them, and I’ve written before about why NFL rivalries never really die.