NFL International Series

• 1. Introduction

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  On the 28th of October 2007, the Miami Dolphins and the New York Giants took the field at Wembley Stadium in London, England. The first 40,000 tickets for that game had sold out in the first 90 minutes they were available. By the final whistle, 81,176 people had watched the Giants defeat the Dolphins 13-10 in the first regular season NFL game ever played outside North America. Nobody was quite sure what to expect. What followed was something the league had never attempted on this scale: a systematic, years-long effort to bring the American football regular season to the rest of the world.

• 2. Before London

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  Two years before Wembley, on the 2nd of October 2005, the Arizona Cardinals defeated the San Francisco 49ers 31-14 at Estadio Azteca in Mexico City. That game, played under the name "Fútbol Americano," drew 103,467 spectators, which was the highest game attendance in NFL history at the time. It was the first regular season NFL game held outside the United States.

  The NFL had been reaching international audiences through other means for years before that. The American Bowl ran preseason games around the world until it ended in 2005. NFL Europe, a developmental league, operated in parallel until its final season, when it was known as NFL Europa, folded in 2007. A planned China Bowl for 2007 was canceled before it ever happened.

  NFL commissioner Roger Goodell had been thinking about what came next. He had floated the idea of a future Super Bowl in London, a prospect that pointed toward his larger ambitions for the sport's reach beyond American borders.

• 3. The Wembley Years

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  Wembley Stadium was the exclusive home of the International Series from 2007 through 2015. For those first years, a single game was held in London each year, televised nationally in the United Kingdom but only regionally in the United States.

  The 2011 game between the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and the Chicago Bears drew just under 77,000 fans, a notable dip from the roughly 84,000 who had attended the two previous years. The NFL attributed the decline to the 2011 NFL lockout, which pushed ticket sales much later than usual. That same year, on the 11th of October 2011, NFL owners voted to approve playing games in the United Kingdom through 2016.

  The Jacksonville Jaguars became the series' anchor team. After the St. Louis Rams backed out of a multi-year London commitment that had been announced on the 20th of January 2012, the Jaguars stepped in and agreed to play a home game in London for four seasons, from 2013 through 2016. The Jaguars later extended that agreement with Wembley Stadium through 2020, a deal announced in October 2015. By the time their Wembley era was finished, the Jaguars had played more games in the city than any other NFL team, logging 12 appearances between 2013 and 2024.

• 4. Expansion and New Stadiums

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  On the 8th of July 2015, the NFL and Tottenham Hotspur F.C. announced a 10-year deal to host at least two London games a year at the new Tottenham Hotspur Stadium beginning in its opening year of 2019. A separate agreement, confirmed on the 3rd of November 2015, brought England's Twickenham Stadium into the rotation, with a minimum of three and as many as five games planned over an initial three-year window.

  The series crossed into Mexico in earnest in 2016, when the Oakland Raiders hosted the Houston Texans on the 21st of November at Estadio Azteca. That game became the first Monday Night Football broadcast from outside the United States. The 2016 game between Washington and Cincinnati was the first International Series game to go to overtime and the first to end as a tie. Its attendance record was later surpassed by the 2017 game between the Baltimore Ravens and Jacksonville Jaguars, which drew 84,592 fans.

  A Mexico City game planned for 2018 between the Los Angeles Rams and the Kansas City Chiefs was ultimately moved back to Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum due to concerns about field conditions at Estadio Azteca. The relocated game attracted its own kind of attention, becoming the third-highest scoring game in NFL history and the highest-scoring Monday Night Football game ever played.

• 5. Germany, Brazil, and Beyond

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  On the 9th of February 2022, the NFL confirmed the addition of Germany to the International Series calendar. The league's interest in Germany was backed by a concrete number: 2.2 million people in Germany had watched Super Bowl LV. NFL executive Mark Waller had previously said in 2017 that the only obstacle to German games was what he called an inventory management problem, meaning that layering Germany on top of four existing London games each year would strain logistics. By October 2021, Düsseldorf, Frankfurt, and Munich had been invited into deeper discussions with the league.

  Allianz Arena in Munich hosted the first Germany game in 2022. Deutsche Bank Park in Frankfurt followed in 2023, and Olympiastadion in Berlin joined in 2025, drawing 72,207 fans for its inaugural NFL game. In December 2025, the league confirmed Germany games would continue through 2029.

  Brazil entered the picture in 2024, when Arena Corinthians in São Paulo hosted its first game. Ticket demand there far exceeded expectations. Of the approximately 150,000 people who queued online for the São Paulo game when tickets went on sale on the 10th of June 2024, only about 10% received a ticket. The 2025 game in São Paulo drew 47,627 fans. Looking ahead, Maracanã Stadium in Rio de Janeiro is scheduled to host three games over a five-year window, beginning in 2026.

  The year 2025 alone added Dublin, Madrid, and Berlin as venues. Croke Park in Dublin hosted 74,512 fans for the Pittsburgh Steelers' game against the Minnesota Vikings. The Bernabéu in Madrid drew 78,610 for the inaugural Spain game.

• 6. The London Franchise Question

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  The Jacksonville Jaguars' owner, Shahid Khan, also owns Premier League club Fulham F.C., which plays in West London. In 2018, Khan dropped a bid to purchase Wembley Stadium for nearly $800 million. The team's deep ties to London, combined with Khan's existing foothold in English football, have made the Jaguars the most frequently cited candidate for potential relocation.

  Those relocation rumors have persisted for years, though the Jaguars' own plans complicate the narrative. The team is planning a $1.4 billion renovation of EverBank Stadium following the 2025 season, with the entire 2027 home schedule expected to be played away from Jacksonville while construction proceeds toward a 2028 completion.

  NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell expressed interest in 2023 in having one or two NFL teams based in the United Kingdom. During a 2024 press conference, he raised the possibility of scheduling regular London games during the Jaguars' stadium renovation as a way for the league to evaluate whether a permanent London team could be financially viable. In January 2026, New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft theorized that the NFL would eventually expand to an 18-game regular season, with every team playing in the International Series at least once per season.

• 7. How the Games Are Structured

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  The collective bargaining agreement enacted in 2021 gave the International Series its current structural backbone. It expanded the regular season to 17 games and required at least four neutral site games each year beginning in 2022. The AFC and NFC alternate seasons in which one conference holds nine home games while the other holds eight; the international home game slots are drawn from the conference with the extra home date, so every team still hosts eight games in its own stadium.

  In December 2021, the league launched the International Home Marketing Areas initiative, granting teams five-year exclusive marketing rights in specific foreign countries. Initially 18 teams were given rights across eight countries. By March 2026, all 32 teams held rights across 22 international marketing areas, spanning countries from Argentina and Colombia to Japan, Nigeria, South Korea, Greece, and the United Arab Emirates.

  In May 2026, the NFL removed a rule that had allowed teams to protect two home games per season from being moved to an international site, meaning any matchup can now be played overseas. The league also announced the International Series would expand to as many as 10 games in 2027.

• 8. The View From Here

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  When NFL Senior Vice President Mark Waller was asked in 2007 whether Australia would ever host a game, he doubted it because of travel concerns while stopping short of ruling it out entirely. On the 5th of February 2025, the Los Angeles Rams were named as the designated home team for the first regular season NFL game in Australia, set for Melbourne Cricket Ground in 2026. The game will air on Netflix, making it the only international game in the series to be distributed on that platform.

  From one game at Wembley in 2007 to a scheduled slate stretching across London, Germany, Brazil, France, Ireland, Spain, Australia, and a returning Mexico City in 2026, the series has grown into a fixture of the NFL calendar. The 2026 Mexico City return will air on NBC as part of Sunday Night Football, while the inaugural France game at Stade de France in Paris will feature the New Orleans Saints as one of the participants, broadcasting on NFL Network to close out a year the league has been planning toward for nearly two decades.