The NFL revealed its 2026 international schedule on Wednesday, a day ahead of the full schedule release on Thursday. Nine games are on the slate this season across seven countries, the most in league history and the contractual maximum under a 2023 resolution that allows the league to play up to eight overseas games in addition to the Jaguars’ annual London contest.
The centerpiece of the schedule is the first-ever regular-season NFL game in Australia, with the 49ers hosting the Rams at Melbourne Cricket Ground on Sept. 10 at 8:35 p.m. ET. The game will air on Netflix, with NBC handling production, as part of a five-game Netflix package that also includes a new Thanksgiving Eve game and the Christmas Day doubleheader. The league auctioned the Australia game as a standalone property rather than bundling it with its existing broadcast partners, the same approach it used for the Brazil game the past two years.
Week 3 brings the league back to Brazil for the third time, with the Ravens and Cowboys playing at Maracanã Stadium in Rio de Janeiro on Sept. 27 on CBS and Paramount+. The Eagles and Packers played the first Brazil game in São Paulo in 2024 on Peacock, and the Chiefs and Chargers played there in 2025 on YouTube, which drew 17.3 million global viewers.
London occupies Weeks 4 through 6. The Colts face the Commanders at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium on Oct. 4, the Eagles play the Jaguars at Tottenham on Oct. 11, and the Texans take on the Jaguars at Wembley Stadium on Oct. 18, all on NFL Network. The Jaguars play two of the three London games, as they have in several recent seasons.
The Steelers and Saints play at Stade de France in Paris on Oct. 25 in Week 7 on NFL Network. The Bengals and Falcons will play at Bernabéu Stadium in Madrid on Nov. 8 in Week 9 on NFL Network, the second-ever NFL game in Spain. Fox gets the Patriots vs. Lions at FC Bayern Munich Stadium on Nov. 15 in Week 10 — as Awful Announcing noted earlier this week — the game will be part of a Fox tripleheader, the first time a single broadcast network has aired three NFL games in one day since 2016. The Vikings and 49ers close the international slate at Estadio Banorte in Mexico City on Nov. 22 in Week 11 on NBC.
Fox, CBS, and NBC each receive an international game during a season in which the league has promised a slight increase in broadcast television exposure amid two federal probes into its practice of transitioning games from linear television to streaming. All three networks also secured new standalone primetime windows earlier this week. The remaining five international games go to NFL Network, which averaged 6.2 million viewers for its six-game slate last season, up 32 percent year over year. The league has long said it wants to eventually sell the international package as its own media rights property.
About Sam Neumann
Since the beginning of 2023, Sam has been a staff writer for Awful Announcing and The Comeback. A 2021 graduate of Temple University, Sam is a Charlotte native, who currently calls Greenville, South Carolina his home. He also has a love/hate relationship with the New York Mets and Jets.