MLB\u2019s new media landscape has brought NBC back to baseball broadcasting in 2026, and part of that is taking over the Sunday Night Baseball franchise that\u2019s been carried by ESPN for the last 35 years.<\/p>\n
Friday, NBC announced their entire Sunday night schedule (and some of these games are afternoon contests, as you will see). This is a departure from ESPN\u2019s practice over the last few years, which was to announce Sunday night broadcasts for the first couple of months of the season, then assign matchups later on depending on pennant races and other factors.<\/p>\n
The Cubs will be featured three times: Sunday, May 31 vs. the Cardinals at St. Louis (6 p.m. CT), Sunday, June 7 vs. the Giants at Wrigley Field (7 p.m. CT) and Sunday, Aug. 30 vs. the Reds at Wrigley Field (2 p.m. CT). All three of these games will be simulcast on NBC\u2019s broadcast network and Peacock, so you should be able to watch them even if you don\u2019t subscribe to Peacock.<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s the entire schedule. The games will be exclusively on Peacock through the end of May and then beginning in September, when NBC carries NBA and NFL games. Note that the times listed below are Eastern time.<\/p>\n
The times listed above are the start times for the broadcast. The May 31 game will start at 6:20, the June 7 game at 7:20 and the Aug. 30 game at 2:10 (those times are Central).<\/p>\n
There will also be full national broadcasts of every game played Sunday, July 5, which the network is calling \u201cStar-Spangled Sunday.\u201d The Cubs\u2019 home game against the Cardinals at Wrigley Field will be carried on Peacock at 1:30 p.m. CT. The network says \u201cmost\u201d of these games will be simulcast on NBC Sports Network. Here\u2019s the full July 5 schedule (again, all times below are Eastern time):<\/p>\n
The time listed above is the correct game time for July 5 \u2014 1:30 p.m. CT.<\/p>\n
NBC will also take over the \u201cSunday Leadoff\u201d package in 2026, a selection of games that will be (generally) the first game of the day from May through August. These games will be exclusively on Peacock (except for July 5). Again, NBC says \u201cmost\u201d Peacock exclusive games will be simulcast on NBC Sports Network. The Cubs aren\u2019t involved in any of these games, but here\u2019s the schedule for you (again, all times Eastern):<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a new day for national baseball broadcasts, so I present these to you to get accustomed to them. ESPN will also have a national broadcast schedule, mostly on Wednesdays. That schedule has yet to be announced; I\u2019ll post info here when it\u2019s available.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MLB\u2019s new media landscape has brought NBC back to baseball broadcasting in 2026, and part of that is…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":514273,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2399],"tags":[5,138,24,40817,4245,161,4],"class_list":{"0":"post-514272","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-chicago-cubs","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-chicago","10":"tag-chicago-cubs","11":"tag-chicago-cubs-mlb-broadcasts-telecasts","12":"tag-chicagocubs","13":"tag-cubs","14":"tag-mlb"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/115873846689008125","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/514272","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=514272"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/514272\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/514273"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=514272"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=514272"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=514272"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}