Al Michaels will be returning to the booth for the 2026 NFL season.
Amazon Prime Video — where Michaels has been the lead game-caller since 2022 — confirmed his return to Sports Business Journal on Friday, with the 81-year-old insisting that he is “at the top of his game.”
“First of all, I feel great,” Michaels told SBJ. “Everyone at Amazon has been fantastic and I love working with this group. I’ve been looking at this year one year at a time and as long as I feel I’m at the top of my game, I’d like to continue.”
Michaels, who has called prime-time NFL games for the past four decades, is set to broadcast Saturday’s Packers and Bears wild-card matchup alongside Kirk Herbstreit as his final game of the season.
The Brooklyn native had previously made his intentions clear that he wanted to continue calling “Thursday Night Football” games, with Michaels noting that Prime Video had not made its decision yet.
“I feel really good right now. It’s been a good year. A lot of fun. I love the people I’m working with. So if I had to make a decision today, I would want to come back,” Michaels said on the “SI Media with Jimmy Traina” podcast in November.
“It’s a two-way street here,” he added. “They could tell me, ‘Hey, we gotta move on. It’s time to make a transition.’ All that. It could happen.
“But as of the moment, as we sit here on this mid-November afternoon, I feel really good. Still love what I do. And again, work with a tremendous crew. So, yeah, I think at this moment in time, I’d like to continue, yes.”
Michaels’ expected return also comes after the legendary broadcaster was caught struggling to keep up during multiple games throughout the 2025 season.
Michaels ditched NBC for Prime Video ahead of the 2022 season when the streaming service first gained rights to “TNF.”
He initially penned a three-year deal with Amazon that paid him $15 million per season. He is now reportedly on a plan that considers his status on a yearly basis.
