The Pro Bowl is done. After 75 years in some form, the NFL is scrapping its all-star event entirely, ending both the tackle and flag football versions of the game for good.
Jonathan Jones of The Athletic broke the news Wednesday, reporting that league executives presented the change to team owners that same day.
Going forward, there’s no standalone Pro Bowl game of any kind.
What the NFL Actually Told Owners About the Pro Bowl
The Pro Bowl becomes a pure individual honor rather than an event. Eighty-eight players will be named Pro Bowlers each season, with no alternates replacing players who opt out.
Instead of a game, selected players get an in-person celebration in Los Angeles during Super Bowl week each February. There’s no flag football matchup and no skills competitions attached to it.
Fans, players and coaches will still vote on who earns the honor. That part of the process isn’t changing, even though the event built around it is disappearing.
Why the Pro Bowl Reached This Point
The NFL has run some version of the Pro Bowl every year since 1951. Format tweaks piled up over the decades, from AFC-versus-NFC tackle football to a captains-draft setup from 2014 through 2016, before switching to flag football in 2023.
None of it solved the core problem. Star players routinely skipped the game, alternates filled the gaps, and the product rarely resembled a real showcase of the league’s best talent.
NFL executive Peter O’Reilly told The Athletic that all-star games across every major sport have struggled with the same issue, failing to represent the true premium of their respective games. He said the 2023 shift to flag football was meant to cut down on replacement-level participation, but the league kept seeing the same pattern repeat.
Player Feedback Pushed the League Toward Honors Only
NFL executive vice president of football operations Troy Vincent Sr. held a call with more than a dozen star players earlier this summer, including Jalen Hurts, Jalen Ramsey, George Kittle and Dion Dawkins. Their message was consistent: they wanted the honor itself treated with more weight, particularly for players who go on to reach the Super Bowl.
That feedback shaped the league’s final decision. Rather than keep tweaking a game nobody fully bought into, the NFL opted to separate the recognition from the exhibition entirely.
NFL Becomes the First Major League to Cut Its All-Star Game
This makes the NFL the first major U.S. sports league to eliminate its all-star event outright, rather than continue reformatting it. The NBA, MLB and NHL have each adjusted their own all-star weekends over the years, but none has gone as far as scrapping the game altogether.
For players, the change removes any incentive to risk an injury in a February exhibition that carried little competitive stakes. For the league, it reframes the Pro Bowl as a credential tied to a real season rather than an event fans had grown skeptical of attending or watching.
What Comes Next
The 2026 regular season kicks off Sept. 9, and this year’s crop of Pro Bowlers will be the first honored under the new format once the season wraps. Expect the announcement of the 88 selections to carry more weight than it has in recent years, since it’s no longer a stepping stone to a game nobody particularly wanted to play.
The bigger question is whether other leagues follow the NFL’s lead. All-star exhibitions across professional sports have faced the same complaints for years, and the NFL just became the first to walk away from the format completely.
