The Tampa Bay Buccaneers experienced an epic late-season collapse in 2025 and their five-year playoff streak is now over. Despite a string of early-season injuries to stars like Mike Evans, Tristan Wirfs, and Bucky Irving, the team raced out to a 6-2 start and were poised to practically walk to a fifth straight NFC South title considering the weakness of the entire division.
Tampa Bay Buccaneers opponents 2026: Who’s on the schedule, how easy or hard will their schedule be
The Bucs missed the playoffs in 2025. We already know their 2026 opponents and we’ll take an early look at the slate.
Getty Images
However, fortunes soured once the calendar flipped to November as the team dropped seven of their next eight games, a stretch that included three losses to the Saints, Falcons, and Panthers in consecutive weeks. They briefly kept their NFC South hopes alive with a Week 18 victory over Carolina, but an Atlanta victory over New Orleans forced a three-way tie at the top of the division, giving the tiebreaker nod to the Panthers. The organization will now have an entire offseason to analyze what went wrong in this 8-9 campaign, but they at least now know their opponent list for 2026.
Tampa Bay Buccaneers list of opponents
Home opponents
- Atlanta Falcons
- Carolina Panthers
- New Orleans Saints
- Green Bay Packers
- Minnesota Vikings
- Cleveland Browns
- Pittsburgh Steelers
- Los Angeles Rams
- Los Angeles Chargers
Road opponents
- Atlanta Falcons
- Baltimore Ravens
- Carolina Panthers
- Chicago Bears
- Cincinnati Bengals
- Detroit Lions
- New Orleans Saints
- Dallas Cowboys
Tampa Bay Buccaneers schedule analysis
The Buccaneers will have nine home games and eight road games next season pending the announcement of the matchups for the 2026 international games. The rotation will include matchups against the entire AFC North and NFC North, along with their usual six divisional games within the NFC South. Since they finished second in the division, they will be matched up with the second-place finishers of the AFC West (Chargers), NFC West (Rams), and NFC East (Cowboys) to round out the 17-game schedule.
Tampa Bay will not have a fist-place schedule for the first time since 2021, which could help its efforts to get back to the postseason next year. The Bucs will have six matchups against 2025 playoff participants, but two of them are their annual divisional tilts against the Panthers. Their road schedule could be tricky as the Ravens, Bengals, Lions, and Cowboys are are expected to improve after their relatively disappointing campaigns this year. There will be challenges on this schedule, but they can manage it as long as they decide to not completely fold in the second half of the year.
See More:
