Free tool on this page: Live wild card race for both conferences
A wild card is a playoff spot for a team that did not win its division. Each conference has three of them. They go to the three best records outside the division winners, seeded 5, 6 and 7. Add the four division winners, and each conference sends seven teams.
The board below shows who holds the six wild cards today and who is chasing them.
Holding the wild cards today: the Broncos, Bengals and Browns in the AFC, and the Vikings, Bears and Packers in the NFC.
AFC wild cards
Better record, lower seed: the Broncos (7-2) hold only a wild card today, while the Steelers lead the AFC North at 6-2.
One division, three wild cards: all three NFC wild cards come from the NFC North today.
Chance is the chance to make the playoffs, out of 100, from 50,000 seasons played out with the real tiebreakers. Updated Nov 15, 4:31 PM ET, week 10.
How a team earns a wild card
Each conference has four divisions of four teams. The four division winners take seeds 1 to 4, ranked by record. Every other team then lines up by record. The top three get the wild cards.
A wild card can come from any division. One division can even send two or three. In 2025 the Rams and the 49ers both got in from the NFC West.
Teams with the same record are split by the wild card tiebreakers. Head to head comes first, then conference record. Our guide to NFL tiebreakers lists every step in order.
Division winner or wild card
The seed decides where a team plays in January. The NFL pairs the 2026 first round like this: 2 hosts 7, 3 hosts 6 and 4 hosts 5.
Division winner: seeds 1 to 4
- Plays the wild card round at home.
- The top seed skips that round with the only bye.
- Sits above every wild card, whatever the records say.
Wild card: seeds 5 to 7
- Plays the wild card round on the road.
- Can never get the bye.
- Hosts a game only against a lower seeded wild card in a later round.
From 2021 to 2025, no wild card hosted a single playoff game.
How many wins it takes
Eleven wins was always enough from 2021 to 2025. All 14 teams that missed their division with 11 wins or more got a wild card.
Ten wins got 9 of 10 teams in. The one that missed was the 2024 Seahawks at 10-7.
Nine wins was usually not enough. Only 4 of the 18 teams that went 9-8 got a wild card. No team with 8 wins or fewer got one.
A tie changes the count a little. All three teams that went 9-7-1 got in. The half win put them ahead of the 9-8 teams.
A better record, still on the road
A division winner is always seeded above a wild card. So a wild card can have the better record and still start on the road. From 2021 to 2025, 19 of the 30 wild cards had a better record than a division winner in their own conference.
The 5 seed always visits the 4 seed. In 8 of those 10 games, the visiting wild card had the better record. It won only 3 of the 8.
The biggest gap: the 2024 Vikings went 14-3 and still finished as a wild card. They played the 10-7 Rams as the road team. The game was moved to Arizona because of the wildfires in Los Angeles. The Rams won 27-9.
Twice a division winner with a losing record hosted a 12-5 wild card. The 8-9 Buccaneers hosted the Cowboys after the 2022 season. The 8-9 Panthers hosted the Rams after the 2025 season. The wild card won both games.
The NFL playoff picture shows the same split in today's standings.
How wild cards do in January
A wild card has to win on the road from the first game. From 2021 to 2025, wild cards won 9 of the 30 wild card round games.
| Wild card round game | Wild card wins, 2021 to 2025 |
|---|---|
| 7 seed at 2 seed | 1 of 10 |
| 6 seed at 3 seed | 5 of 10 |
| 5 seed at 4 seed | 3 of 10 |
| All six games each year | 9 of 30 |
Three of those nine won again in the divisional round. They were the 49ers in 2021, the Commanders in 2024 and the Rams in 2025. All three lost the conference championship game after that. So no wild card reached the Super Bowl in those five seasons.
Seven wild cards have won the Super Bowl since the wild card began in 1970. The latest were the 2020 Buccaneers. They beat the Chiefs 31-9 in Super Bowl LV, in their own stadium.
When the wild card round is played
This season's wild card round runs from Saturday, January 16 to Monday, January 18, 2027. Six games are played, three in each conference. The two top seeds rest that weekend.
The NFL playoff bracket shows those six games as they stand today. Your own team's chance of a spot is one tap away in the NFL playoff chances calculator.