Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce is set to return for a 13th season in 2025, ending speculation that the 35-year-old might retire. The news was confirmed on social media via Kelce’s podcast “New Heights.”
Earlier on Thursday, Kelce told ESPN’s Pat McAfee he was “coming back for sure.”
“Going to try and get into the best shape that I’ve been this offseason and get back to the mountaintop,” he said. “Got a real bad taste in my mouth with how I played in that last game and how I got the guys ready for battle. I can’t go out like that.”
Following Kansas City’s loss to Philadelphia in the Super Bowl on Feb. 9, Kelce — who was drafted by the Chiefs in 2013 and played his entire career with the franchise — said on his podcast that he had not made a decision yet about whether he would return for another season. He did note, however, that the demands of the NFL “can weigh on you.”
Kelce is entering the final year of a two-year deal signed in 2024.
Though the Chiefs gave Kelce time to consider his options following the Super Bowl loss, the team couldn’t extend that period indefinitely, as Kelce was due an $11.5 million non-guaranteed roster bonus on March 14, according to Mike Florio of NBC Sports.
Kelce is coming off a season in which he remained one of the most prolific at his position, with his 97 catches ranking third among all tight ends. Yet his three touchdown catches and 823 receiving yards were both his fewest in a season since his rookie season, when he appeared in just one game. In September, his NFL-record streak of 114 consecutive games with at least three catches came to an end.
A three-time Super Bowl winner, Kelce produced seven consecutive 1,000-yard receiving seasons between 2016-22. His 1,004 career receptions make him one of just 15 players all-time with at least 1,000 catches, and his 12,151 receiving yards ranks 28th all-time.
Though already one of the NFL’s best-known players by virtue of making 10 Pro Bowls and four all-pro teams, Kelce’s fame, and the spotlight on him, has intensified dramatically in recent years as his exposure has grown off the field. In 2023, he began dating global pop star Taylor Swift, who attended multiple games in Kansas City. In the 2024 Super Bowl, the Swift-Kelce storyline “elevated the game’s stature as the center of the pop culture universe,” the Los Angeles Times wrote, turning the Chiefs’ victory into the most-watched TV event ever, with an average audience of 123.4 million viewers, according to Nielsen.
At the same time, Kelce has used his NFL platform as a launching pad into even wider mainstream pop culture exposure. In 2024, a game show hosted by Kelce premiered on Amazon Prime, and he also acted in an FX drama series. “New Heights,” the podcast he co-hosts with his brother Jason, has become so popular that in 2024, an Amazon subsidiary acquired rights to distribute it in a deal worth reportedly $100 million.
Had he opted to walk away from the NFL, Kelce — the rare non-quarterback to parlay his on-field NFL success into mainstream celebrity — would have walked into a retirement filled with options. Instead, he has opted to chase a fourth Super Bowl title.
Kansas City won Super Bowls during the 2019, 2022 and 2023 seasons, and played in two more, thanks in part to the uncanny connection between Kelce and Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes in the postseason. Kelce burnished his credentials as one of the most dependable playoff pass-catchers while racking up 2,078 career postseason receiving yards, second all-time only to Jerry Rice, the only players ever to surpass 2,000 yards. During the Chiefs’ run to the 2025 Super Bowl, Kelce surpassed Rice for two NFL postseason records: most career 100-yard games in the postseason (nine) and most career catches in the Super Bowl (35).
