It’s never too early to look, right?
Heading into the 2025 NFL Draft, the Minnesota Vikings had the fewest available selections because of prior trades they had made, starting Draft weekend with only four selections. As things stand right now, they’re not going to have that sort of problem heading into the 2026 NFL Draft in Pittsburgh.
We’re going to do a quick review of what picks the Vikings are looking at heading into the 2026 NFL Draft. Unfortunately, there are a couple of questions that are unanswered, but we’ll navigate things as best we can.
As far as picks the Vikings have traded away, there’s a bit of a question as to what pick they gave up in the trade for offensive tackle Cam Robinson with the Jacksonville Jaguars this past season. The pick was dependent on Robinson’s playing time: If Robinson met the playing time threshold, the Vikings would send a fourth-round pick to Jacksonville, and if he didn’t it would be a fifth-rounder. In addition, if Robinson didn’t meet the requires playing time, the Jaguars would send a seventh-round pick back to Minnesota.
Given that Robinson started every game he played with Minnesota after he was acquired, I’m going to assume that the Vikings are going to be out a fourth-rounder and will not be getting anything back in return.
There’s also a small question of what the Vikings and the Houston Texans will have to exchange, if anything, as a part of the Vikings’ annual trade for running back Cam Akers. If Akers were to meet certain criteria, the Vikings would have to send a sixth-rounder to Houston while getting a seventh-rounder back. If Akers didn’t meet the criteria, no picks change hands.
Unfortunately, I can’t find anything anywhere that details what the conditions of the Akers deal were in this case. The best I can do at this point is to go off the conditions outlined in the Akers trade between the Vikings and the Los Angeles Rams in 2023, which stipulated that Akers had to put up 500 combined yards rushing and receiving in order to trigger the pick swap. If we use that as the criteria, Akers did not meet the conditions (he had 297 yards rushing and 52 yards receiving), so we’ll conclude that the picks from this deal are not going to change hands.
In addition, the Vikings received an actual sixth-round pick from Houston earlier this offseason in the trade for offensive lineman Ed Ingram. They also agreed to send a sixth-round pick to the San Francisco 49ers as part of the Jordan Mason trade. If the Vikings have their own sixth-rounder and Houston’s, it is not clear at the present time which of those picks would go to San Francisco.
With all that, this appears to be the list of the Vikings’ picks in the 2026 NFL Draft.
- First-round selection
- Second-round selection
- Third-round selection
- Third-round selection (projected Compensatory pick, courtesy of Over the Cap)
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Fourth-round selection(Going to Jacksonville for Cam Robinson) - Fourth-round selection (projected Compensatory pick)
- Fifth-round selection
- Sixth-round selection (Acquired from Houston in Ed Ingram trade, could be going to San Francisco for Jordan Mason)
- Sixth-round selection (Could be going to San Francisco for Jordan Mason)
- Seventh-round selection
(Transactions all courtesy of Pro Sports Transactions.)
Since one of those sixth-round picks is going to the 49ers, the Vikings currently have eight picks for the 2026 NFL Draft. They currently have at least one selection in each round and a pair of picks in the third.
This is obviously subject to quite a bit of change over the next 12 months, as we’ve seen that the Vikings have no issue trading draft picks in-season if they think they can acquire a player who can help them in the second half of the season. However, I don’t think we’re going to have to worry about Kwesi Adofo-Mensah and company heading into the 2026 NFL Draft with only four selections.
