How many teams are in the NFL?

There are 32 teams in the National Football League. The league is divided into two conferences—the American Football Conference and the National Football Conference—with 16 teams in each. Every conference contains four divisions, and each division has four clubs.

The NFL reached its current 32-team structure in 2002, when the Houston Texans joined as an expansion franchise. That expansion also allowed the league to reorganize its divisions into the balanced eight-division format still used today. Each team plays a 17-game regular-season schedule over 18 weeks, with one bye week.

The number can be confused with the total number of regular-season games played each week, the number of teams in one conference, or the number of divisions. The league’s 32 clubs are spread across 31 metropolitan areas because New York and Los Angeles each have two teams. The NFL began as the American Professional Football Association in 1920 and adopted the NFL name in 1922.