The National Football League’s aggressive international plans for 2026 and beyond continue to move into greater focus.
The league said Wednesday that it has completed a pact to play regular-season games in 2026 and 2028 in Munich at Allianz Arena, the home of the Bundesliga power FC Bayern Munich. The NFL was already set to play during those seasons in Germany, pairing with planned returns to Berlin in 2027 and 2029 after a game there last month.
Reaching the pact for Munich, however, will bring the NFL back to where it played in 2022 and 2024, and where the league really began to make fan-development inroads in Germany. Now, the league counts the country as one of its top international markets.
Eleven of 32 teams have rights to Germany in the NFL’s Global Markets Program, a figure higher than any other country. The NFL claims to have more than 20 million fans in Germany, representing one of its top international markets, both in raw fan count and penetration relative to population. Several individual NFL teams also have marketing relationships with Bundesliga clubs, with the pacts looking to further leverage the crossover between football and soccer fandom.
“Germany is of huge strategic importance for the NFL in Europe, and our return to Munich signals the league’s long-term commitment to playing games in the market,” said NFL DACH general manager Alexander Steinforth.
Broader Template
The NFL, meanwhile, continues to shape what will be an unprecedented level of international play in 2026. The already-confirmed set of five games for next season now includes:
- One in Melbourne, Australia, with the Rams as the designated home team
- One in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
- Two in London at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium
- One in Munich
More will be added to that list as a series of other new and returning international markets for the NFL are also under active consideration, including Mexico, Spain, Ireland, France, and Saudi Arabia. The final tally of the league’s global games in 2026 will pass the seven played this year, as the league potentially moves toward a full-season slate of such contests.
“We’ve laid out a dozen or 13 priority markets, and we’re starting to do the due diligence,” said NFL EVP Peter O’Reilly during the league’s fall meeting.
