U2 Is Turning Thanksgiving Eve Into a Halftime Show. The NFL Wants a New Holiday Tradition

U2 will headline halftime of the NFL’s first Thanksgiving Eve game on Wednesday, November 25, placing a fiftieth-anniversary performance inside a new piece of holiday programming. The Green Bay Packers face the Los Angeles Rams at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, with kickoff at 8 p.m. Eastern and 5 p.m. Pacific. Netflix will stream the game and halftime show live worldwide. The booking is bigger than a famous band filling an interval. The league and the platform are trying to teach audiences that Thanksgiving football can begin a night earlier.

The timing gives U2 a ready-made narrative. Bono, The Edge, Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen Jr. formed the band in Dublin in 1976, so the performance arrives during its fiftieth year. The NFL announcement promises special guests but has not identified them. That gap will attract speculation, yet the confirmed facts are already substantial: a global stream, a major stadium, a holiday date and a band with decades of experience turning large venues into emotional theater.

U2 returns to an NFL halftime stage nearly twenty-five years after its 2002 Super Bowl performance. Image: Clancy3434 / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY 2.0

U2 last occupied an NFL halftime stage at Super Bowl XXXVI in February 2002. That performance became part of television history because the names of people killed in the September 11 attacks were projected behind the band during “Where the Streets Have No Name.” Returning nearly twenty-five years later creates an unavoidable comparison. The new show does not need to copy the old one, but it will be judged against a moment remembered for more than spectacle.

Netflix has been building its own football-event language. Beyoncé’s 2024 Christmas halftime show became a separate cultural product, and Snoop Dogg followed with a holiday performance the next year. The company says its 2025 Christmas game became the most-streamed NFL regular-season game in U.S. history. A Thanksgiving Eve slot extends that strategy by creating another night when viewers might gather around a live stream rather than choose a show from the catalog.

The game will be included with an active Netflix subscription. Coverage begins at 6 p.m. Eastern and 3 p.m. Pacific, two hours before kickoff. Local broadcast arrangements apply in the competing teams’ markets, while NFL+ covers eligible U.S. mobile and tablet viewing. The show’s global availability matters because U2’s audience extends far beyond the United States, and the band can bring viewers who may not otherwise watch a Packers-Rams regular-season game.

This is how streaming keeps changing live music. A halftime performance is short, but its audience can rival or exceed a full concert’s reach. The songs become clips, reaction posts and news footage within minutes. For the artist, the event can introduce older work to younger viewers and promote a new release or tour without presenting a conventional advertisement. For the platform, the music keeps people inside a sports broadcast even when they do not care about the score.

U2 also understands the culture of stadium-scale performance. The band’s strongest large shows use size to create intimacy rather than merely increase volume. A long runway, a single close-up or a crowd singing one line can make tens of thousands of people feel included in the same moment. SoFi’s architecture and the limits of an NFL halftime change the tools, but not the central challenge: deliver an idea quickly enough that it reads in the upper deck and on a phone.

The set list remains unknown. A fiftieth-anniversary appearance makes familiar songs likely, yet the band also has new music and a world tour cycle to support. Halftime timing leaves room for only a compact sequence, often shortened and stitched together. Viewers should expect a television performance designed around transitions rather than a miniature concert with full songs. Special guests could widen the musical range or simply provide one surprise built for replay.

The new holiday tradition is not guaranteed to stick. Families already divide Thanksgiving week among travel, cooking, local events and Wednesday-night social plans. The NFL is asking them to add another appointment. U2 lowers the risk by giving non-football viewers a reason to tune in, while Netflix removes a separate pay-per-view decision for existing members. Success will be measured in viewing, conversation and whether the league repeats the experiment next year.

For now, the bet is clear. The NFL supplies the game, Netflix supplies worldwide distribution and U2 supplies history that can be understood in one sentence. Fifty years after four musicians formed a band in Dublin, they will stand at midfield in California and try to make the night before Thanksgiving feel like an event of its own. If the performance lands, a new holiday habit may begin with a very familiar guitar sound.