Brazil, Christmas Could Be on Chiefs’ Docket in 2025

The Athletic reported this week that Kansas City is the horse leading the stretch to serve as the Chargers’ opponent in Week 1. The second game on the league’s schedule, the Sept. 5 contest, is slated for São Paulo, Brazil, on a Friday night, one day after the Philadelphia Eagles open the season against a to-be-determined opponent.

The winner of the São Paulo game has a positive history, at least for one season. In the first NFL game in the South American country last year, the Eagles beat the Packers to launch their Super Bowl-championship season. Nate Taylor and Daniel Popper reported the game is expected to be streamed on Amazon, Disney+, Netflix, Paramount+, or Peacock, the NBC-affiliated app that streamed the contest last year.

Kansas City and the Chargers already have a history of historic NFL meetings. In 2022, Kansas City’s home opener was a Thursday night in Week 2 against its AFC West foe, the first NFL game ever streamed exclusively on Amazon Prime Video as the league began a new Thursday night partnership.

"It's an incredible honor and opportunity to be selected for the inaugural game of Prime Video's first season as the exclusive streaming partner of Thursday Night Football," Chiefs president Mark Donovan said at the time. "We're proud that Amazon took this opportunity to showcase our fans and the Arrowhead Experience when we host the Chargers for our home opener at GEHA Field this season and look forward to seeing the rest of our 2022 schedule next month."

The 2025 schedule will be released next month, and the Chiefs reportedly want another important day on that slate – Christmas. Kansas City already has played on Christmas Day each of the last two years, a loss at home to the Raiders in 2023 and a victory on the road in Pittsburgh last season.

Now, the Chiefs want to become a permanent tradition on the holiday, much like the Lions and Cowboys have traditionally hosted Thanksgiving games for decades.

That could be a challenge, though. While the league seems committed to playing every year on Christmas moving forward, it’s a much more difficult holiday to schedule than Thanksgiving, which always falls on a Thursday. Dec. 25 coincidentally is a Thursday this year, then falls on a Friday next year, Saturday in 2027, Monday in 2028, Tuesday in 2029 and Wednesday in 2030.

And when it falls on Tuesday or Wednesday, as it did in 2024, the league has to get creative late in the season, when playoffs are on the line. Last year, the Chiefs joined Pittsburgh, Houston and Baltimore in playing three games over an 11-day stretch (consecutive games on Sunday, Saturday and Wednesday) to accommodate Wednesday Christmas games.