Al Michaels will return to call NFL games for Prime Video in 2026
LOS ANGELES — Al Michaels has been making play-by-play calls for prime-time NFL games for 40 years.
Its next game is Saturday, when the Chicago Bears host the Green Bay Packers at Soldier Field in an NFC wild-card game on Amazon Prime Video.
It won’t be his last.
Michaels will return to call games for Prime Video’s NFL coverage next season, the streaming service confirmed Friday. The 81-year-old Sports Broadcasting Hall of Famer has been the play-by-play announcer for “Thursday Night Football,” along with color commentator Kirk Herbstreit, since Prime Video acquired the rights to those games beginning with the 2022 season.
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After initially receiving a three-year contract from Amazon, which expired after 2024, Michaels would have been working this season under a one-year contract. Michaels told Sports Illustrated’s Jimmy Traina in November that he would be happy to return in 2026 if Amazon wanted him to.
“It’s a two-way street here,” Michaels said. “They might tell me, ‘We need to move on, it’s time to transition,’ all that. I don’t know, it could happen. But from the moment we’re sitting here this mid-November afternoon, I feel really good, I still love what I’m doing and, again, I’m working with a great team. So, yeah, I think at this point I’d like to continue, yeah.”
One of Michaels’ first jobs after college was a very brief stint with the legendary Chick Hearn on the Los Angeles Lakers radio broadcasts in 1967. Since then, he has announced some of the greatest moments in sports history, including his signature “Do you believe in miracles? Yes!” appeal of the 1980 U.S. Olympic hockey team’s loss to the Soviet Union.
Michaels was the play-by-play voice of ABC’s “Monday Night Football” from 1986 to 2005 and NBC’s “Sunday Night Football” from 2006 to 2021. He called 11 Super Bowls, most recently on Feb. 13, 2022, when the Rams beat the Cincinnati Bengals at SoFi Stadium.
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