The NFL sends nine regular season games abroad this year, its biggest overseas run yet. Four continents, seven countries, eight stadiums, starting in Melbourne on September 10 and finishing in Mexico City on November 22. Three cities host their first NFL game ever. Here is what the schedule actually looks like.

Melbourne Gets the First Game, at Breakfast Time

San Francisco meets the Los Angeles Rams at the Melbourne Cricket Ground on Thursday, September 10, kicking off at 8:35 p.m. Eastern. Netflix carries it worldwide, which says plenty about where the league thinks its next fans live. Australia has never hosted a regular season NFL game before.

Australians follow most overseas sport through international media rather than local broadcasters, and the sites serving that audience publish NFL primers next to rankings of the best crypto casinos for readers who wager on what they watch. An NFC West rivalry is a decent opening argument for a market the league has barely tested.

Local kickoff lands at 10:35 a.m. the following morning. Breakfast is gameday food now.

Rio Follows, and the Cowboys Finally Leave Home

Baltimore faces Dallas at the Maracanã on Sunday, September 27, at 4:25 p.m. Eastern. Brazil hosts an NFL game for the third straight year, though the first two went to São Paulo. Dallas has not played an international game since 2014, when the Cowboys beat Jacksonville at Wembley. Twelve years is a long time for the league's most televised franchise to stay home.

Timezone maths is where this schedule turns annoying. Kickoffs land anywhere from breakfast to prime time depending on the host city, and outlets built on football coverage have added American football sections to keep up, Tribuna.com among them. Nine games, nine different alarm settings.

Three cities receive their first NFL regular season game in 2026:

• Melbourne, at a cricket ground that seats around 100,000
• Rio de Janeiro, at the Maracanã
• Paris, at the Stade de France

London Still Does the Heavy Lifting

Three consecutive weeks belong to the UK, which takes Britain to 45 regular season games hosted since 2007. Two land at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, one at Wembley. All three kick off at 9:30 a.m. Eastern, so American viewers get football with their coffee for a month.

If you are tracking the London leg, here is the order:

1. Week 4, October 4: Indianapolis against Washington, Tottenham Hotspur Stadium
2. Week 5, October 11: Philadelphia against Jacksonville, Tottenham Hotspur Stadium
3. Week 6, October 18: Houston against Jacksonville, Wembley

Notice Jacksonville twice. The Jaguars play back-to-back London games, in different stadiums, a week apart. At what point does a team stop visiting a city and simply start living there?

Paris Debuts, Madrid Returns, Munich Closes Europe

Six of the nine games happen in Europe, and the three outside London each carry their own hook. Paris has never staged a regular season NFL game. Madrid gets a second straight year at the Bernabéu under a multi-year agreement between the league, the city and Real Madrid. Munich hosts its third game, and Germany its sixth.

The continental European fixtures:

• October 25, Week 7: Pittsburgh versus New Orleans at the Stade de France
• November 8, Week 9: Cincinnati versus Atlanta at the Bernabéu
• November 15: New England versus Detroit at the FC Bayern Munich Arena

Detroit and New England meeting in Bavaria in mid November reads better on paper than it will feel at 6 a.m. body clock time.

Mexico City Closes the Slate, and San Francisco Travels Twice

Minnesota faces San Francisco at Estadio Banorte on Sunday, November 22, in a Sunday night slot. Most fans still call the venue the Azteca. It hosted the first NFL regular season game played outside the United States back in 2005, when Arizona beat the 49ers in front of a crowd reported at 103,467, a number bigger than anything the NFL had drawn at that point and one that other Azteca crowds have since chased down.

Count the 49ers again. They open the season in Melbourne, then fly to Mexico City in Week 11, two international trips in a single year. Jacksonville pulls the same double in London, though the Jaguars at least stay in one city.

Mexico City now has games locked in through 2028. The league calls Mexico its largest fanbase outside the United States, and that is the sort of claim leagues enjoy making, though the attendance figures at the Azteca make it hard to argue with. The league has staged sixty-two regular season games abroad heading into this year. Commissioner Roger Goodell has said he wants sixteen a year eventually, one for every team.

Nine is not sixteen. Give it time.