Travis Kelce Contract Details: How the Chiefs Set TE Up for a Potential Retirement Tour

Kansas City has its star tight end back for a 14th NFL season.

Travis Kelce is returning to the Chiefs in 2026. | Kevin Jairaj-Imagn Images

Travis Kelce is officially coming back to Kansas City.

In case you missed it, the Chiefs and the star tight end reached an agreement on a one-year deal last week just ahead of the start of the league's legal tampering period. Rather than testing free agency for the first time in his career, the 36-year-old is now set to return for a 14th NFL season with the club that selected him in the third round of the 2013 draft.

Sports Illustrated has obtained the full breakdown of Kelce’s one-year deal for 2026. Here’s a complete look at the details.

Travis Kelce contract: Full details ahead of tight end’s 14th NFL season

Travis Kelce is returning to the Chiefs for a 14th NFL season. | Jay Biggerstaff-Imagn Images

• Kelce gets $12 million fully guaranteed—$3 million in base salary, and $9 million in a series of roster bonuses. One is a training camp bonus of $3 million. The remaining $6 million will come in per-game roster bonuses. But those are 90-man roster bonuses, and fully guaranteed. He doesn’t have to be active to get them.

• The contract is broken up this way to manage the cap hits, exploiting the 50% rule and a post-June 1 mechanism to spread them out over three years. Kelce, as such, has a $4,896,667 hit for 2026, and dead-money hits of $3,551,667 for 2027 and 2028.

• The Chiefs have a long-standing policy of not doing void years, and the above two rules allow them to sidestep that (using a tactic the Eagles have over the years). Kelce has minimum salaries built into dummy years in 2027 and 2028, with a $40 million guarantee for 2028 vesting June 8 of next year—which will force the Chiefs to release him by then, and allow for them to spread the dead money out, since the date falls after June 1.

• Kansas City also has $3 million in available incentives. One tier ties to the Chiefs making the playoffs—if they do, he makes $750,000 if he plays 60% of the regular season snaps, $1 million at 70% of the snaps, or $2 million at 80% of the snaps. The second tier is triggered if the Chiefs win the AFC and go to the Super Bowl—that happens, and he gets another $250,000 at 60% playtime, or $1 million at 70% playtime.

• The contract basically paves the way to retirement for Kelce. If that’s the path, after Kelce’s 14th season, the Chiefs would then quietly release him after June 1. If it’s not, then they’d obviously renegotiate well before then.

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