NFL On the Road Again
With Seattle’s impressive Super Bowl LX victory fading from memory, the draft out of the way, and a long time to wait for the start of the 2026 NFL season, football fans have been starved of anything to get excited about recently. But the release of the 2026 NFL schedules always sparks debate and prompts the league’s social media teams to kick into creative gear.
Fans across the nation can now plan their season, predict how many wins they might be able to celebrate, and possibly plan a route to winning a championship in February of next year. The home and away games will be pored over, but there is another sub-section of games that will have many fans talking, and that’s the latest group of NFL International Series matchups.
NFL teams have been playing games in other countries as far back as the 1980s, but regular season games first became a part of the calendar when the New York Giants beat the Miami Dolphins at London’s Wembley Stadium in 2007. This year, there will be a record 11 games played overseas, with anyone online sports betting in Minnesota probably paying close attention to the Vikings game against the 49ers, scheduled for November in Mexico City. That will be the final NFL “road trip” of the season, but here’s a full rundown of where overseas fans can catch NFL games in 2026.
First Game Down Under
The 2026 NFL season will begin for two California rivals, the 49ers and the Rams, in a first-ever visit for the league to Melbourne, Australia. The league’s opener takes place the day before with a rematch of Super Bowl LX, but the 49ers and Rams will arrive Down Under a week earlier to acclimatize and prepare for their own week one game.
The 49ers have enjoyed a curious crowd advantage at SoFi Stadium in recent years, with legions of San Francisco fans filling the place for what is actually a road game. Sean McVay will be particularly happy that he is forcing Kyle Shanahan’s team to fly across the world for this game in a stadium that might end up having a more equal share of fans.
Football, Samba Style
Brazil will host its third International Series game in week three, when the Cowboys “host” the Ravens. The Ravens have a clause in their lease that forbids any home game to be played anywhere outside of the city, so it will be Dallas as the nominal home team for this matchup in the legendary Maracanã Stadium, a place famous for its soccer history.
Matching one of the most popular global teams, Dallas, with one of the most popular individual athletes in Lamar Jackson is a clever move by the NFL, and the Ravens will be hoping that it can do better than in 2025 when a 1-5 start to the season stymied any real chance of doing well in the playoffs.
London Calling
Weeks four, five, and six will see the NFL return to its home away from home, with London, England, having hosted more International Series games than anywhere else. There have already been 42 regular season games played in the UK’s capital city, with this year’s matchups split between Wembley and the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium.
Jacksonville has become very used to playing games in the UK, having taken a Trans-Atlantic trip for seven of the last eight years. The Jags have done well to build a fan base in Europe and will play back-to-back home games in 2026 against the Eagles and the Texans in weeks five and six.
Before that, in week four, the Commanders and the Colts will return to London for an early-season game that could have a say in how each of their year’s might go. Washington was a successful team when football was first taking off in the UK in the 1980s, but has not been quite as good in recent times. A win against last year’s surprise team could bolster support on a global scale.
European Road Trip
With the Vikings rounding off the 2026 NFL International Series with their game against the 49ers in Mexico City in week 11, there are three more matchups in Europe coming up first that could define how the season goes for six other teams. Paris, Madrid, and Munich will host games in weeks seven, nine, and ten, when the participants will be focused on making the playoffs.
The Steelers will be hoping that the Saints will not have improved too much from last year’s 6-11 record when they meet in France, while both Cincinnati and Atlanta will both be looking to post a win in Madrid after experiencing losing records in 2025. The final European game this season will be in Germany, a country with a very strong football-loving community. Munich will play host to New England and Detroit in week ten, as both teams hope for a win that propels them towards the playoffs.
Figure 2 London’s Wembley Stadium has hosted more International Series games than anywhere else – Photo by Anders Krøgh Jørgensen on Unsplash
NFL’s Global Mission
With over 40 years of NFL football in Europe in some form or another, there is an obviously strong relationship long forged by individual teams, as well as the league, with the rest of the world. The NFL was probably the first of the major US sports leagues to recognize the need to expand the brand and globalize the sport.
There are tentative plans by the NFL to go even further and formally base expansion teams in Europe, a move that would catapult the American brand of football into a more global sport and actively compete with the traditional soccer clubs and other sports in those locations. The NFL may be the most popular league in the US, but it harbors dreams of being the most popular on the planet – and this season’s International Series games are just a part of that overall plan.
