NFL Eliminates the Pro Bowl Game After 75 Years, Keeps the Honor

The NFL confirmed Wednesday that it is permanently retiring the Pro Bowl as a competitive event, ending a run that stretched back to 1951 and closing out a decade-long search for a format that could hold fans' attention. The league will continue to name a class of Pro Bowlers each season, but for the first time since the honor was created, no game, skills competition or flag-football showcase will be staged to mark it.

The change was detailed in an announcement posted to the league's official news site and confirmed by Commissioner Roger Goodell to reporters at NFL owners' meetings in Atlanta. Beginning with the 2026 season, the league will select 88 players as Pro Bowlers through the same fan, player and coach voting used in past years, but that recognition will no longer come attached to any on-field event between the AFC and NFC.

What the league announced

Under the new structure, the Pro Bowl class will be revealed in late December through an expanded presentation across NFL platforms, team channels and broadcast partners, rather than the run-up to a February game. Selected players will receive a permanent designation on their uniforms the following season and a personalized, one-of-one commemorative trading card produced in partnership with Topps. During the week that previously hosted the Pro Bowl, the league will instead bring the newly honored class to Los Angeles for an in-person celebration with players and their families, according to the league's Pro Bowl Games page. Fan balloting for the honor, unchanged in structure, remains open through the NFL's official voting portal.

There will be no alternate selections to fill vacated spots, a break from the prior system in which injured or unavailable honorees were routinely replaced. The number of Pro Bowlers named each year, 88, will stay fixed regardless of how many original selections ultimately play the following season.

How the Pro Bowl got here

The traditional AFC-NFC all-star game ran for 71 years before the league scrapped tackle football for the event in 2023, replacing it with a week of skills competitions, celebrity-flavored minigames such as dodgeball and tug-of-war, and eventually a flag-football contest. None of it solved the underlying problem: healthy stars routinely skipped the game, replacements diluted the rosters, and the on-field product bore little resemblance to regular NFL competition. Goodell said he had raised concerns about the game's quality publicly as far back as 2011.

"I think we've been focused on the game. You've heard me say it for many years about the quality of the game in the Pro Bowl. I don't think it's up to NFL standards," Goodell told reporters, according to Yahoo Sports' account of his remarks.

Goodell said the league spent the past two years polling players directly about what they wanted from the honor, and the answers pointed away from competitive play so soon after the postseason ends.

"We had conference calls the last couple years: What's working? What's not? What would you like to see? And the number one thing that came out, and there were a lot of wonderful comments by the players, one is: we want to be honored and celebrated as a Pro Bowl player. It just opened my eyes."

Who is affected

The change touches every player who reaches Pro Bowl caliber going forward, along with the broadcast partners, host city and vendors built around the annual event. Los Angeles, which had been slated to host Pro Bowl weekend activities, will instead host the in-person celebration for the incoming class. Troy Vincent, the league's executive vice president of football operations, framed the shift as a response to what players themselves had been asking for rather than a cost-cutting or ratings-driven retreat.

"This direction came directly from our continued conversations with players and what they value most about the Pro Bowl. Being selected by your peers, coaches and fans as one of the very best at your position carries tremendous meaning," Vincent said, in comments reported by Gray Television's WAFB and corroborated by the league's own release.

Peter O'Reilly, the league's executive vice president overseeing club business and league events, echoed that framing in the same announcement, saying the honor would "return to its original purpose" now that it is decoupled from a game players were reluctant to play. Super Bowl week will still carry some football content tied to the change: the league said it plans flag-football programming during that week through its existing partnership with TMRW Sports, separate from the retired Pro Bowl game itself, according to CBS Sports' report on the announcement.

What happens next

The first test of the new model comes in late December, when the 2026 Pro Bowl class is unveiled without a subsequent game attached to it. That announcement will double as the league's answer to a question it has wrestled with publicly since at least 2011: whether an all-star distinction can hold its value once the exhibition built around it is gone. The league has not said whether the change is permanent or subject to review after a season, though Goodell described the shift as something both the league and players agreed to revisit.

"So it was a really healthy process. Listen, I think probably both sides would probably say this might work better or this. But we made an agreement that let's try this. Let's learn from it," Goodell said.

For now, the practical effect is straightforward: the roughly 1,750 players who will compete for 53-man rosters across the league this season are chasing an honor that, for the first time in 75 years, comes with a trading card and a uniform patch rather than a trip to play in an exhibition game.