The roster cutdown is the deadline by which every NFL team must trim its roster from the 90 players it carries in preseason to the 53 it can start the season with. It falls just after the final preseason weekend in late August, and in 2026 it was Sunday 30 August.
The date moves a little from year to year. For years the cutdown sat on the Tuesday after the last preseason games, which gave coaches two days with the tape before they settled the final places. In 2026 the league brought it forward to the Sunday, because the San Francisco 49ers were flying to Melbourne that week to open the regular season against the Los Angeles Rams.
The day after the cutdown, most of the released players go on waivers, and clubs claim them in priority order, worst record first. The ones who clear waivers become the pool that practice squads are built from, and those squads are filed the same day.
More than a thousand players lose their places in a single afternoon. Waiver claims then move players between rosters over the following days, so the list a club names that evening can change before the first game.