The 2026 NFL Draft, which will bring a handful of newcomers to Tampa Bay Buccaneers headquarters, is now less than three weeks away. Just prior to that three-day event (April 23-25), many of the players already on the Buccaneers' roster will be heading back to work.
The Buccaneers' 2026 offseason workout program is set to begin on Monday, April 20. It will last nine weeks and conclude with a full-team mandatory minicamp from June 16-18. As always, the rest of the workout program is voluntary and will take part in three separate phases.
The Buccaneers are one of 21 NFL teams that will kick off their offseason programs on either April 20 or 21. Teams with a new head coach in 2026 are permitted to start up to two weeks earlier than the rest of the league. As such, offseason programs will begin on April 6 or 7 for 10 teams that made a change at the top earlier this year: Arizona, Atlanta, Baltimore, Buffalo, Cleveland, Las Vegas, Miami, Pittsburgh, Tennessee and the New York Giants. The Denver Broncos will be the last to get back to work, starting their program on May 4.
Each team's voluntary offseason program can last a maximum of nine weeks and is broken up into three phases, with the amount and variety of work allowed and the involvement of coaches ramping up from one phase to the next. The first two weeks of the program are known as Phase One, in which activities are limited to meetings, strength and conditioning and rehab work only. Phase Two is three weeks long and includes more on-field work and instruction but no drills with live contact or offensive and defensive units going against each other.
Phase Three is the part of the program that most resembles in-season workouts, with teams permitted to hold up to 10 "organized team activity days," or OTAs. While there is still no live contact allowed during OTAs, teams can conduct such offense-vs.-defense drills as 11-on-11, 9-on-7 and 7-on-7. This phase also concludes the aforementioned three-day minicamp, which is the only part of the program that is mandatory for veteran players.
The Buccaneers will conduct nine OTA practices over the course of three weeks in May and June. Those OTA dates are May 26-28, June 2-4 and 9-11.
Teams are also allowed to conduct a rookie football development program that lasts up to seven weeks and in 2026 may begin on May 11. That includes a post-draft rookie minicamp that can be held on either the first or second weekend after the draft.
