The NFL’s international schedule has gotten too big to think of as just “the London games.” In 2026, the league plays nine regular-season games across three continents outside the United States, including brand-new stops in Melbourne, Paris, and Rio de Janeiro. That changes how a football fan plans a fall trip. London is no longer the default. Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, Wembley, and Estadio Santiago Bernabeu sit alongside the Melbourne Cricket Ground and the Maracana on the same season schedule, and the calendar runs from the opening Sunday of the season all the way into late November. If you want to combine a road game with a passport stamp this year, the first question is where each one is actually being played. The rest follows from that.
This is the full 2026 international slate, what each venue offers, and how to think about the trip you build around the matchup you pick.
Where Are the 2026 NFL International Games Being Played?
The 2026 international schedule runs nine games across seven countries and eight stadiums, starting in Australia on the opening Sunday of the season and finishing in Mexico City the week before Thanksgiving. The full list, in chronological order, is the easiest way to see how the slate sets up.
- Week 1, Thursday September 10: Los Angeles Rams host the San Francisco 49ers at the Melbourne Cricket Ground in Melbourne, Australia. Kickoff 8:35 p.m. ET (Friday morning local time).
- Week 3, Sunday September 27: Dallas Cowboys host the Baltimore Ravens at the Maracana in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Kickoff 4:25 p.m. ET.
- Week 4, Sunday October 4: Washington Commanders host the Indianapolis Colts at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in London, United Kingdom. Kickoff 9:30 a.m. ET.
- Week 5, Sunday October 11: Jacksonville Jaguars host the Philadelphia Eagles at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in London, United Kingdom. Kickoff 9:30 a.m. ET.
- Week 6, Sunday October 18: Jacksonville Jaguars host the Houston Texans at Wembley Stadium in London, United Kingdom. Kickoff 9:30 a.m. ET.
- Week 7, Sunday October 25: New Orleans Saints host the Pittsburgh Steelers at Stade de France in Paris, France. Kickoff 9:30 a.m. ET.
- Week 9, Sunday November 8: Atlanta Falcons host the Cincinnati Bengals at Estadio Santiago Bernabeu in Madrid, Spain. Kickoff 9:30 a.m. ET.
- Week 10, Sunday November 15: Detroit Lions host the New England Patriots at FC Bayern Munich Arena in Munich, Germany. Kickoff 9:30 a.m. ET.
- Week 11, Sunday November 22: San Francisco 49ers host the Minnesota Vikings at Estadio Banorte in Mexico City, Mexico. Kickoff 8:20 p.m. ET.
That is more international football than the league has ever scheduled in a single season. It also spreads across more time zones than ever before. Three games kick off in U.S. primetime or late-afternoon windows, which is friendly for the people staying home to watch. Six games kick off Sunday morning Eastern from European venues, which means an early breakfast at home or a properly local Sunday in Europe. If you are flying, the kickoff time matters more than it does for a domestic road game, because it dictates whether you fly home Sunday night, Monday red-eye, or stay through Tuesday. NFL international ticket and hotel packages handle the ticket-pickup, hotel block, transfers, and game-day logistics together for fans who would rather not stitch all of that together themselves.
Why Did the NFL Add Melbourne, Paris, and Rio for 2026?
Three of the nine venues are first-time NFL hosts in 2026. Melbourne becomes the first regular-season NFL city in Australia. Paris becomes the first regular-season NFL city in continental France. Rio is technically Brazil’s second straight year on the calendar, but it shifts the country’s NFL footprint south from Sao Paulo (2024 and 2025) to a different stadium and a different city personality. None of those choices is random. The league has been pushing international expansion the way the NBA pushed it in the early 2000s, and 2026 is the most aggressive single-season step the NFL has ever taken.
The reasoning is straightforward from the league office. International games sell out faster than most U.S. road games. They attract a different audience than the typical domestic NFL crowd, with more first-time attendees and more families traveling for the long weekend. They also give the league valuable on-the-ground data about which markets are ready for a permanent franchise relationship, a marketing partnership, or just a recurring annual game. The Tottenham and Wembley deals in London ran that playbook for more than a decade. Now Madrid, Munich, and Mexico City are running the same play on shorter timelines, and Melbourne, Paris, and Rio are the next tier on deck.
For fans, the practical impact is that the international slate is no longer a single-market trip. It is a global calendar, and the question of which city to pick is now closer to the kind of decision you would make about an international tennis or Formula 1 trip than the kind of decision you would make about a Sunday in Pittsburgh or Green Bay. What an international sports trip actually looks like at this scale is closer to the right mental model than a typical American road-game weekend, because flights, visas, currency, and time zones all start to matter.
What Are the 2026 NFL International Stadiums Actually Like?
Eight stadiums host the nine games. Each has its own seating shape, sightline character, and game-day rhythm. A short pass through each one is the fastest way to picture the trip.
Melbourne Cricket Ground, Melbourne, Australia
The MCG is an oval cricket and Australian rules football stadium that seats about 100,000. It is the largest single-venue host on the 2026 international slate. The NFL field will be laid into the cricket oval, which means many seats will sit farther from the sideline than U.S. fans are used to. The upside is scale: an opening Sunday primetime game in front of a six-figure crowd is a different sensory experience than a typical NFL stadium. Melbourne in mid-September is early spring, with daytime highs around the upper 50s to mid-60s Fahrenheit and evening lows that often slip into the 40s. Bring layers.
Maracana, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
The Maracana is the spiritual home of Brazilian soccer, with a current capacity around 78,000 after multiple renovations. The bowl is steep, the noise is famous, and the venue carries a different weight than a purpose-built NFL stadium. Late September in Rio is mid-spring on the southern calendar, warm and humid, with afternoon kickoff for the U.S. broadcast window. The stadium sits in the Maracana neighborhood north of the city center, with most fan travel concentrated around the Zona Sul beaches (Copacabana, Ipanema, Leblon).
Tottenham Hotspur Stadium and Wembley Stadium, London
London is the only city with multiple 2026 games, and the two stadiums offer different experiences. Tottenham Hotspur Stadium was purpose-engineered for NFL games. A retractable artificial NFL surface sits beneath the natural soccer pitch, NFL-specific locker rooms and dressing rooms are built in, and the bowl seats about 62,000 in an NFL configuration with tight sightlines. Wembley seats about 90,000 in its largest configurations and feels closer to the classic European cathedral atmosphere, with a long walking approach from Wembley Park station up Olympic Way. Both stadiums are a comfortable Tube ride from central London hotels. If you want a deeper sense of what attending an NFL match in London actually feels like on the ground, the routine has been well-rehearsed at this point: arrive Friday, do a sightseeing day Saturday, fan zone Sunday morning, kickoff at 2:30 p.m. local.
Stade de France, Paris, France
The Stade de France in the Saint-Denis suburb of Paris seats about 80,000 and is one of the most-decorated venues in world sport, hosting the 1998 FIFA World Cup final, the 2007 Rugby World Cup final, and the opening and closing ceremonies of the 2024 Summer Games. It is connected to central Paris by RER B (10 to 15 minutes) and Metro line 13. The October 25 kickoff slot puts U.S. fans into a 3:30 p.m. local start, which leaves the rest of the weekend open for Paris itself.
Estadio Santiago Bernabeu, Madrid, Spain
Real Madrid’s home ground reopened in 2024 after a multi-year renovation that added a retractable roof, a retractable pitch, and a redesigned bowl. The renovated capacity sits around 78,000, with steep upper decks and tight sightlines. The November 8 kickoff is at 3:30 p.m. Madrid time, which is a friendly window for both U.S. broadcast and an evening tapas crawl in the Salamanca or La Latina neighborhoods afterward.
FC Bayern Munich Arena, Munich, Germany
The arena formerly known as Allianz Arena hosted the league’s most-discussed 2022 international game (Tom Brady’s Buccaneers over the Seahawks) and a follow-up game in 2024. It seats about 75,000 in its NFL configuration, with the famous inflated-cushion exterior panels that change color for soccer matches. The November 15 kickoff lands at 3:30 p.m. local. Munich weather in mid-November can be raw, with daytime highs in the upper 40s and a real chance of rain or first snow flurries. Dress for it.
Estadio Banorte, Mexico City, Mexico
The renamed Estadio Banorte (formerly Estadio Azteca) seats roughly 83,000 and sits at about 7,300 feet of elevation, the only altitude venue on the slate. Altitude matters less for spectators than it does for players, but flights into Mexico City in late November are usually pleasant (dry, mid-70s during the day, mid-50s at night). The November 22 kickoff at 8:20 p.m. ET is one of the season’s marquee Sunday primetime slots and traditionally draws a massive Mexico City crowd.
How Far Out Should You Book a 2026 NFL International Trip?
The simplest answer is sooner than you would for a domestic NFL road game. The two longest leads in 2026 are Melbourne (September 13) and Mexico City (November 22), with about three months separating each game from the closest neighboring international game. Hotel inventory in Melbourne, Munich, and Madrid is much thinner than in London or Mexico City, and those rooms tend to lock up first. International flight pricing has its own rhythm: economy fares to London settle into their lowest reliable band roughly 90 to 120 days out, while peak holiday-shoulder fares to Australia (mid-September) and Brazil (late September) move faster.
The other factor that gets compressed for international trips is the matchup uncertainty. Ticket buyers locking in by July know they have a confirmed home team, a confirmed visiting team, and a confirmed kickoff time. Waiting until late summer to see how the season opens does not change the matchup, but it can leave you with worse seat blocks, lower availability for nearby hotel rooms, and significantly higher airfare. The closer you get to game week, the more the math tilts toward last-minute scrambling rather than calm planning.
Fans who do not want to assemble flights, hotels, ground transfers, ticket pickup, and stadium logistics on their own typically work with a sports-travel specialist that bundles all of it. The trade is convenience and certainty in exchange for the package premium. The closer to game week you are, the more that premium tends to pay for itself in time saved and seat quality protected.
Which International City Should You Pick for Your First NFL Trip Abroad?
If 2026 is your first international NFL trip, the decision usually comes down to four factors: cost, ease of travel, language, and what you want to do the rest of the weekend. None of the nine games is a bad pick. They are just different trips.
Lowest-friction first trip: London. The Tube is fluent, English is the operating language, U.S. credit cards work everywhere, the football routine is mature, and the city itself absorbs sports tourism better than anywhere else on the slate. Three games means flexibility on dates and matchups. The downside is that London is the most expensive city on the list once hotel rates spike around game weekends.
Best value: Mexico City or Madrid. Mexico City offers the shortest flight from most of the U.S. and reasonable hotel pricing, with the primetime kickoff slot working in your favor for a Sunday-Monday-Tuesday trip. Madrid is a smaller, walkable European capital with strong food, a renovated stadium, and pricing that has not yet caught up to London or Paris.
Biggest bucket-list trip: Melbourne. It is the longest flight on the slate (14 to 16 hours from the West Coast, longer from the East), it is opening Sunday, and the MCG itself is one of the great venues in world sport. The full trip is a 7-to-10-day investment when you include flight days and recovery, which makes the math very different from a long weekend in London or Madrid.
Most distinctive cultural moment: Rio. The Maracana, the beaches, the music scene, and the late-September warm weather give the trip a personality that does not exist anywhere else on the slate. It rewards travelers who plan for the city as much as for the game.
Best for groups already comfortable in Europe: Munich or Paris. Both pair well with side trips. Munich is two hours by train from Salzburg and a fast flight to Berlin. Paris is everything that Paris already is, with a stadium that connects to the city by commuter rail. Fans who have already done multi-city European travel during the 2026 World Cup window already understand how the logistics work; pairing a continental NFL game with a Tuesday in Berlin or a Friday in Florence is a normal extension.
How Do You Build a Trip That’s More Than Just the Game?
A three-hour football game does not justify a $1,800 international flight on its own. The international NFL trips that fans actually rave about are the ones where the game anchors a multi-day visit to the city, not the ones where the visit feels like an excuse to sit in traffic on the way to the stadium.
A workable template for most of the European games is Thursday evening arrival, Friday recovery and sightseeing, Saturday full day in the city (museums, food, neighborhood walks), Sunday morning fan zone and kickoff at the local 2:30 p.m. window, Sunday evening dinner, Monday morning departure or a Tuesday extension. For Melbourne, that template stretches to a seven-night minimum because of the flight time. For Rio and Mexico City, the late-Sunday-afternoon and Sunday-primetime kickoff windows leave the daytime open for the beach or for the city’s archaeology and food scenes before the game.
Group travel changes the math. Hotel blocks for groups of 10 or more are usually easier to negotiate than single rooms, and stadium ticket holds can sometimes be arranged for groups committing well in advance. The catch is that group decisions take longer than individual ones, which is exactly why most groups that successfully attend an international NFL game start the planning conversation by early summer for a fall game, not in August.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many NFL international games are there in 2026?
Nine regular-season games. That is the largest international slate the league has ever scheduled, up from seven in 2025. The games run from Week 1 in Melbourne (September 10) through Week 11 in Mexico City (November 22), with London hosting three games, and Rio, Paris, Madrid, Munich, and Mexico City each hosting one.
What time do the 2026 international games start in the United States?
Six of the nine games kick off at 9:30 a.m. Eastern, the standard slot for European Sunday-afternoon games. The Rio game (September 27) kicks off at 4:25 p.m. Eastern. The Melbourne game (September 10, a Thursday in local time but Saturday/Sunday on the U.S. broadcast window) and the Mexico City game (November 22) are scheduled in primetime windows, kicking off at 8:35 p.m. and 8:20 p.m. Eastern respectively.
Are tickets to the 2026 international games hard to get?
Some are harder than others. London games have a deep waiting list that takes priority before general sale. Madrid, Munich, Paris, and Melbourne are first-time or near-first-time NFL events in their cities and tend to sell out quickly through hospitality and travel-package channels. Mexico City has a long sellout history. Booking a hospitality or travel package, or buying directly on the day single-game tickets are released, are the two most reliable paths.
Which teams are playing in more than one international game?
Two teams have two international games on the 2026 slate. The Jacksonville Jaguars host both of their Week 5 and Week 6 home games in London (one at Tottenham and one at Wembley), continuing the franchise’s long-standing London partnership. The San Francisco 49ers play in Melbourne (Week 1, as the visiting team) and host the Vikings in Mexico City (Week 11).
Do I need a visa to attend a 2026 NFL international game?
U.S. passport holders can enter Australia, the United Kingdom, France, Spain, Germany, and Mexico for short tourist stays without a traditional visa, but two notable details apply for 2026: Australia requires an Electronic Travel Authority before departure, and the EU is rolling out the ETIAS pre-travel authorization for short-stay U.S. visitors to Schengen countries (France, Spain, Germany). Always check current State Department guidance closer to your departure date.
Can I attend more than one international game on the same trip?
In theory yes, but only in a few combinations. The three London games run on consecutive Sundays (October 4, 11, and 18), so a back-to-back London weekend is possible. Paris (October 25) is one week after the third London game and reachable by Eurostar in about 2 hours and 20 minutes. Madrid (November 8) and Munich (November 15) are also one week apart and connect by a short flight. Most fans pick one game per trip, but a Europe-heavy October or November can stack two if the schedule fits.
Do the international games count as regular-season games in the standings?
Yes. Every 2026 international game is a regular-season game with full playoff implications. The visiting team is technically the “home team” in each of these games (giving up a home date in their U.S. stadium), so the visiting team handles the home-team operational role and the matchup counts in the league standings exactly the way a domestic Sunday game does.
When Should You Start Locking in Your 2026 NFL International Plans?
The Week 1 trip to Melbourne is the most time-sensitive of the nine games, and the European slate has its own internal deadlines as hotel inventory tightens through summer. If a 2026 international NFL game is on your shortlist, the calmest version of the trip is the one you start planning early in the summer, well before Labor Day, even if kickoff is not until November. Complete NFL ticket and hotel travel packages handle the moving pieces (tickets, hotels, transfers, fan-zone access, and game-day logistics) so you can keep your attention on the game and the city instead of on three separate confirmation emails.
A custom Sportcation built around a 2026 NFL international weekend can be shaped around the matchup you care about, the city you want to spend time in, and the rest of the season’s calendar. The earlier the trip is planned, the more leverage you have on seat blocks, hotel choice, and routing. Reach out when the dates are still flexible.