The NFL Goes Global: Melbourne, Rio, London and What Comes Next
The NFL scheduled nine regular-season games outside the United States this season, across seven countries and four continents. Four of them are done. Two were blowouts and two ended on field goals as time expired. Together they say a lot about where the league is taking the game, and how well it is working on the field.
This is a look at what the first four games abroad produced, what the numbers say about the crowds and the travel, and what is still to come before Thanksgiving.
Melbourne and Rio: Two New Cities, Two Very Different Nights
The international season opened in Australia on Thursday, Sept. 10. It was Friday morning in Melbourne. The 49ers beat the Rams 27-7 at the Melbourne Cricket Ground in the first NFL regular-season game ever played in that country. It streamed on Netflix in the United States.
The crowd was the story. The MCG reported 100,021 fans, the seventh-largest crowd for a regular-season game in league history. That is a remarkable number for a first visit to a market that had never hosted a game that counted.
The football was one-sided. Brock Purdy threw for 205 yards and three touchdowns. Mike Evans, Demarcus Robinson and Deebo Samuel each caught one. The Rams scored once. For the Rams, making their Australian debut, it was a rough way to open a season. For the league, the result mattered less than the attendance.
Rio de Janeiro was the opposite kind of game. On Sept. 27, in Week 3, Baltimore beat Dallas 34-31 at the Maracanã. It was the NFL's third game in Brazil and the first in Rio. The first two were in São Paulo, at the 48,000-seat NeoQuímica Arena, where the turf drew complaints in 2024 and forced Eagles and Packers players to change cleats mid-game.
This time the grass held up, and the finish was one of the best of the season so far. With seven seconds left, Lamar Jackson completed a 27-yard pass to Zay Flowers and called timeout with one second left. Tyler Loop then made a 56-yard field goal to win it. The announced crowd was 72,792.
The result left the Ravens at 2-1 and the Cowboys at 1-2, and Dallas had to fly home and turn around for a road game in Houston the next Sunday. That is the hidden cost of these trips. The game abroad is one week. The recovery can take two.
The Rio game also changed one thing about how the league schedules Brazil. The first two Brazil games, Packers and Eagles in 2024 and Chiefs and Chargers in 2025, were played on the Friday of Week 1. Moving the game to Week 3 gave both teams two games of tape on each other before the trip. Based on how close it was, it worked.
London's Three-Week Run
London is in the middle of three straight weeks of games. When the run is done, the United Kingdom will have hosted 45 regular-season games since the series began in 2007, according to the league's schedule release.
The first was Oct. 4 at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium. Indianapolis beat Washington 30-13. Jonathan Taylor ran 20 times for 95 yards and two touchdowns, and Daniel Jones added a rushing score. The Colts pulled back to .500 with the win. The crowd was 60,907.
Both teams were back in Europe for a second straight year. Washington had lost to Miami in Madrid in 2025, and Indianapolis had beaten Atlanta in Berlin. Neither club had a great start to 2026, which made the trip feel like a reset for both. Only one got it.
The second London game, on Oct. 11, was the wildest finish of the international season. Jacksonville beat Philadelphia 19-17 at Tottenham. Jake Elliott gave the Eagles a 17-16 lead with a 48-yard field goal and eight seconds left. Ameer Abdullah returned the kickoff 53 yards, leaving one second. Cam Little then made a 57-yard field goal as time expired.
That is two international games this season decided by a field goal of 56 yards or longer on the final play. Rio and Tottenham will be on highlight reels for years.
The Eagles ran for 22 yards in that game, their lowest total since Week 7 of 2015. Trevor Lawrence threw for 331 yards and two touchdowns, both to Parker Washington. Tottenham drew 61,322.
The way fans in the United States watch these games has shifted too. Melbourne streamed on Netflix. Rio aired on CBS and Paramount+. The league is using the international slate to share games among partners as much as across continents.
The third London game moves to Wembley Stadium on Oct. 18, with Houston and Jacksonville meeting at 9:30 a.m. ET on NFL Network. The Jaguars will play in London two weeks in a row.
What the First Four Games Tell Us
The league has now played regular-season games in London, Berlin, Munich, Frankfurt, Madrid, Dublin, São Paulo, Mexico City and Toronto, and this season added Melbourne, Rio and Paris. The NFL's Oct. 10 release put the count of regular-season games played outside the United States at 62.
The crowds are the clearest takeaway. Melbourne drew more than 100,000. Rio drew more than 72,000. The two London games each drew more than 60,000. Those are not neutral-site exhibitions with empty upper decks. They are big events in big buildings.
The games have also been competitive more often than not. Two of the four came down to the last snap. That matters for a league that sells these games as must-watch television in the United States, where most of the audience still lives.
The travel has not produced an obvious pattern. The 49ers flew to Australia and won by 20. The Ravens flew to Brazil and won on the last play. The Colts and Jaguars won in London. The early data does not show a clear penalty for the team that travels farther, though four games is too small a sample to say much.
The halftime shows are part of the push too. The league announced seven live headline concerts for this season's international games, up from six shows across five countries in 2025.
Five international games remain after London.
Paris gets its first NFL game on Sunday, Oct. 25, when Pittsburgh plays New Orleans at Stade de France at 9:30 a.m. ET. That is a third new city for 2026, after Melbourne and Rio.
Madrid hosts Cincinnati and Atlanta on Sunday, Nov. 8, at the Bernabéu, also at 9:30 a.m. ET on NFL Network.
Munich hosts New England and Detroit on Sunday, Nov. 15, at the home of FC Bayern Munich. That game is on FOX.
Mexico City closes the international season on Sunday, Nov. 22, with Minnesota and San Francisco at Estadio Banorte. It is a prime-time game at 8:20 p.m. ET on NBC and Peacock. The 49ers will be playing their second international game of the season, after Melbourne. Both clubs are 5-0 through five weeks, so the last international game of the year could also be one of the biggest regular-season games on the calendar.
The scheduling of these games tells you something about the league's priorities. Seven of the nine games abroad are in Europe or Australia, where the kickoff times have to fit a United States morning or late-night window. Mexico City, in the same general time zone as the central United States, gets the prime-time slot.
International games are not just marketing. They shape schedules. Jacksonville is the extreme case this year, staying in London for two straight Sundays instead of flying home between games.
They also affect the standings in ways that are easy to overlook. Baltimore's win in Rio came against an NFC team and helped push the Ravens to 2-1 at the time. Indianapolis' win in London got the Colts back to .500 when their season was wobbling. Jacksonville's win at Tottenham moved the Jaguars to 4-1. Those are real wins with real playoff consequences, earned in front of crowds that do not look like a home crowd for either side.
The league is already planning around that. Moving Brazil to Week 3, giving London a three-week block and putting Mexico City in prime time are all signs that the NFL sees the international schedule as a permanent part of the season, not a novelty.
Four games into the 2026 international season, the NFL has drawn record-sized crowds, opened two new markets and produced two last-second finishes. The football has held up. The fields have held up. The audiences have shown up.
The international games also give the league a test lab. Rio tested a grass field after the turf problems in São Paulo. London is testing back-to-back weeks for the same team. Each one teaches the league something about how far it can push the format, and the early answers have been good ones.
Five games remain, including a first trip to Paris and a prime-time finish in Mexico City. If the first four are any guide, the league will keep adding cities, and the games abroad will keep mattering in the standings.
The Signal, Not The Noise.
