Super Bowl 2026 brings in 125 million viewers, down slightly from last year

The Super Bowl put up some pretty solid numbers.

The Big Game, in which the Seattle Seahawks handily beat the New England Patriots 29–13, saw an average of 124.9 million viewers across NBC, Telemundo, Peacock, NFL+, and NBC Sports Digital, according to Nielsen figures released late Tuesday. It notched 137.8 million viewers during the second quarter, becoming the “highest peak viewership in US TV history,” according to NBC.

This year’s Super Bowl is the second-most viewed show in US history, behind only last year’s Super Bowl, which brought in 127.7 million viewers on Fox. It’s also the most-viewed Spanish-language broadcast of the Super Bowl in the US, reaching an average of 3.3 million viewers.

In a press release, NBCUniversal said the viewership makes it the most-watched program in the broadcaster’s nearly 100-year history.

The Super Bowl halftime show, which featured Bad Bunny, notched an average of 128.2 million viewers, although that number could increase once global viewership data goes live next week. That’s down slightly from last year’s halftime show performance by Kendrick Lamar, which hit 133.5 million viewers.

On Spanish-language broadcaster Telemundo, halftime show viewership peaked at an average of 4.8 million viewers, making it the “most-watched Super Bowl halftime show in Spanish-language history,” according to NBC.

Social consumption of the halftime show, which includes owned partners and influencers, reached a new high of 4 billion views after the first 24 hours, according to data from Ripple Analytics cited by the NFL. The NFL’s three most-viewed social posts of all time now all come from Bad Bunny’s performance, accumulating over 115 years of total watch time across social media platforms (amounting to around 4 billion minutes), according to the league.