Minnesota Vikings 2026 Strength of Schedule: 17th-Hardest in the NFL
The Minnesota Vikings have the 17th-hardest schedule in the NFL for 2026: their 17 opponents average 8.50 projected wins, and 9 of them are projected winning teams, 4 of those projected for 10 wins or more.
Minnesota Vikings 2026 schedule
| Wk | Opponent | Opp Strength | Rest |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Packers | Winning | 7 |
| 2 | Bears | Winning | 7 |
| 3 | Buccaneers | 7 | |
| 4 | Dolphins | 7 | |
| 5 | Saints | 7 (+1) | |
| 6 | Bye week | ||
| 7 | Colts | 14 (+7) | |
| 8 | Lions | 10+ win | 7 |
| 9 | Bills | 10+ win | 8 |
| 10 | Packers | Winning | 6 |
| 11 | 49ers | 10+ win | 7 |
| 12 | Falcons | 7 | |
| 13 | Panthers | 7 (+1) | |
| 14 | Patriots | Winning | 4 |
| 15 | Lions | 10+ win | 10 (+3) |
| 16 | Commanders | 7 | |
| 17 | Jets | 7 | |
| 18 | Bears | Winning | 7 |
Toughest stretch
Weeks 8-10: at Lions, Bills, at Packers. Three straight projected winning teams, two of them projected for 10 wins or more.
Softest stretch
Weeks 4-7: Dolphins, at Saints, Colts. None of the three is a projected winning team.
Rest: where the Vikings sit
Across the 2026 season the Vikings are up 4 days of rest on their opponents across the seventeen games. 1 game comes at a rest deficit of three days or more, and 2 come with a three-day edge the other way. Rest is zero-sum across the league — every day one team is rested is a day its opponent was not — so these net out to nothing across all 32 teams.
How this is measured
Opponent strength here is the betting market's 2026 win total, not last season's record — a forward projection that already prices in the draft, free agency and coaching changes, and that carries none of the luck baked into a won-lost record.
Read the spread before the rank. Across the whole league, hardest schedule to easiest covers about 1.5 win-total points spread over seventeen games — real, but small. Every win total in the market ends in a half-win and every schedule is seventeen games, so two schedules one place apart in the table differ by about 0.06 of a projected win, which is why 24 of the 32 teams share a rank with somebody else. Strength of schedule is a tiebreaker between two teams you already rate evenly. It is not a reason to move one of them.
Vikings schedule questions
Do the Vikings have a hard schedule in 2026?
By market win totals, it is close to average. The Vikings have the 17th-hardest schedule in the league — their 17 opponents average 8.50 projected wins, against a league average of 8.50 — and 9 of those opponents are projected winning teams.
When is the Vikings bye week in 2026?
The Vikings are on bye in week 6 of the 2026 regular season.
What is the toughest stretch of the Vikings 2026 schedule?
Weeks 8 through 10, when the Vikings play at Lions, Bills, at Packers — all three projected winning teams.
Where the Vikings rank
Minnesota Vikings have the 17th-hardest schedule of the 32. The Cardinals have the hardest at 9.32, the Lions the easiest at 7.79. All 32 schedules ranked.
The weekly insights email. One story a week about what actually happened in the NFL — every number verified.
Every Vikings game, storied weekly.
The Muffed Vikings Show — free, in your podcast app.
Ask this data a question
Every figure on this page comes out of Muffed's verified panel — and you can query the whole thing in plain English. No account, no key. Ask the data →
Use Muffed in your AI
Ask Claude or ChatGPT football questions and get these verified figures back, with sources. Add https://muffed.ai/api/mcp — free, no account, no API key.