Week 1 preview: Bears at Panthers

Chicago Bears travel to Bank of America Stadium, Charlotte, NC for the opening week of the 2026 season, kick-off Sunday 13 September at 17:00 UTC, live on FOX.

Chicago Bears finished the 2025 season 11-6 and took the 2nd seed in the NFC. Carolina Panthers finished 8-9 and took the 4th seed.

The opening line has it at CHI -2.5 with a total of 46.5, which tells you the market is treating this as a home-field game rather than a mismatch.

What the box score does not carry is the personnel chess. Heavier packages early forced a matchup that never got fixed, and by the fourth quarter the adjustments were coming too late to matter.

Dave Canales is in charge on the home sideline, with Ben Johnson opposite him. Week one form is famously unreliable, but the openers still set the tone for a division race that runs to January.