In 2026, the NFL plays nine regular-season games across four continents — a slate that would have been unthinkable when the league first took a regular-season game outside the United States. The road from a single experimental fixture to a permanent, expanding fixture on the calendar took two decades, and it's worth knowing how it happened before diving into this year's games.
Mexico City, 2005: the game that started it all
The NFL's first regular-season game outside the US wasn't in London — it was in Mexico City. On 2 October 2005, the Arizona Cardinals and San Francisco 49ers played a regular-season game at Estadio Azteca in front of a crowd of more than 103,000, the largest to watch a regular-season NFL game anywhere, ever. It was a one-off, but it proved something the league had suspected for a while: American football had a hungry audience well beyond US borders.
2007: London and the birth of the "International Series"
Two years later, the NFL turned that one-off into a plan. On 28 October 2007, the New York Giants beat the Miami Dolphins 13–10 at Wembley Stadium in front of over 81,000 fans — the first NFL regular-season game ever played in Europe, and the official start of what the league branded the NFL International Series. That Giants team went on to win Super Bowl XLII that same season, a nice bit of foreshadowing for how seriously London would come to be taken.
A single London game became an annual fixture, then two, then three, as demand consistently outstripped ticket supply. Wembley was joined by Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in 2019 — a ground purpose-built with a retractable natural pitch specifically so it could host NFL games alongside Premier League football.
Mexico City returns, and the series goes global
Mexico City rejoined the rotation in 2016, this time as a fixture rather than a one-off, with the Oakland Raiders beating the Houston Texans at a raucous, sold-out Azteca. The 2020 season paused the series entirely because of the COVID-19 pandemic, but it returned the following year and then accelerated: Germany hosted its first NFL game in Munich in 2022, followed by Frankfurt joining as a second German venue. In 2024, the series crossed the Atlantic again for a true first — a game in São Paulo, Brazil, the first NFL game ever played in South America.
What started as a single 2005 experiment in Mexico City is now a fixture spanning four continents and seven countries.
2026: the biggest expansion yet
This season is the largest international slate the NFL has ever played. Alongside the now-established venues in London, Munich and Mexico City, 2026 adds four entirely new host nations in one go: Australia (Melbourne), France (Paris), Spain (Madrid), and a second Brazilian city, Rio de Janeiro. Nine games, four continents, seven countries — and for the first time, a regular-season NFL game in the Southern Hemisphere.
Two decades on from that single record-breaking afternoon in Mexico City, the International Series isn't an experiment anymore. It's one of the most closely-watched parts of the NFL calendar every year — and this site exists to help you follow, predict and travel to every game on it.