Sunday 30 August 2026, moved forward from the Tuesday after the final preseason weekend to the Sunday immediately after it. Waiver claims and practice squads follow on the 31st.
Every NFL club has to be down to 53 players by Sunday 30 August 2026.
That is a change, and it is the part worth knowing. For years the cutdown fell on the Tuesday after the last preseason weekend, which gave coaching staffs two clear days to watch the tape from the final exhibition, argue about the bottom eight places on the roster and make the calls. The deadline now sits on the Sunday immediately after that weekend instead. The final preseason games finish and the decisions are due almost straight away.
What follows is unchanged in shape. Waiver claims are due on Monday 31 August, and practice squads are filed with the league the same day, after the initial 53-man rosters have been announced. A player cut on the Sunday can be claimed on the Monday by any club with priority, and the ones who clear waivers are the pool the practice squads are built from.
The compression is the story. Roughly 1,100 players are released across the league in a single afternoon, and clubs that want a specific one back on their practice squad now have less time to plan for the claim order they are gambling against.
One detail this desk is not printing: the exact clock time of the deadline. Two league-facing outlets carry it in different time zones, one at 5pm Central and one at 6pm Eastern. This desk read those as two different instants and left the hour out, but they are the same instant.
Update, 22 September 2026: the deadline has passed. It fell at 6pm ET on Sunday 30 August (CBS Sports; NBC New York). CBS Sports reports the league moved it to the Sunday because the San Francisco 49ers flew to Melbourne that week for their 10 September opener against the Los Angeles Rams. The standing answer, kept up to date, is the NFL roster cutdown entry in the glossary, linked at the foot of this page.
Correction, 22 September 2026: this page said 5pm Central and 6pm Eastern were not the same instant, and held the hour back for that reason. They are the same instant, 22:00 UTC, because Central Daylight Time runs one hour behind Eastern Daylight Time, so the two outlets agreed.
Sources: Raiders.com official notice on the 30 August 2026 cutdown and the 31 August waiver and practice-squad dates; Chargers.com and Bengals.com club briefings on the same deadline; NFL.com roster cuts tracker, August 2026, on the league-wide volume; Yahoo Sports on the move from the Tuesday to the Sunday.
The standing answer, kept up to date: The NFL roster cutdown