The Vikings will close the 2026 regular season at U.S. Bank Stadium against the Chicago Bears, according to a report from Ben Goessling of the Minnesota Star-Tribune. The matchup would give Minnesota a home finale against Chicago in the latest schedule leak ahead of Thursday’s formal release of the slate.
If the leak holds, it would extend a pattern that defined the first six seasons of U.S. Bank Stadium’s existence. From 2016 to 2021, the Vikings finished their home schedule against the Bears every year, and in five of those six seasons the game came in the final week of the regular season. The lone exception came in 2020, when Minnesota had two road games after its last home game against Chicago.
The reported Bears game matters because it fits the way the end of the Vikings’ home schedule has often looked during the stadium’s early years. That history gives the 2026 regular season a familiar shape before the official schedule is unveiled on Thursday, with Chicago once again attached to the final chapter at U.S. Bank Stadium.
There is still a wrinkle in how the league tends to use the last week of the season. All of the games in Week 18 are divisional matchups, and the Green Bay Packers and Detroit Lions are set to meet as well. That leaves the Vikings’ reported finish in line with the league’s late-season setup, but it also means the rest of the Week 18 picture will matter just as much once the full schedule becomes public.
For now, the leaks have been limited, which has kept the picture incomplete. But the one reported piece already says plenty: the vikings schedule 2026 appears ready to end the same way so many of Minnesota’s home slates did at the start of U.S. Bank Stadium, with the Bears walking into Minneapolis for one more divisional game that could shape the final day of the regular season.
