The 1976 NFL Championship Series was the 1st edition of the NFL Night Series, a national club Australian rules football tournament organised by the National Football League (NFL) between the leading clubs from the VFL, the SANFL and the WANFL.
It replaced the Championship of Australia tournament that been contested between the champion clubs of the VFL, the SANFL, the WANFL and the Tasmanian State Premiership between 1972 and 1975 and, as with those earlier tournaments, the games were (mostly) played in Adelaide.
The 1976 NFL Night Series was planned as a forerunner to a full-scale national competition in 1977 that would feature all the VFL, SANFL and WANFL teams plus representative teams from Tasmania, Queensland, New South Wales and the ACT.
Ultimately, the 1976 competition would be the only one to feature the VFL clubs - the Victorian League chose to break away in 1977 and run a rival competition, the VFL Night Series.