The NFL released its full 2026 international games schedule on Thursday, and the Detroit Lions drew the New England Patriots in Munich on Sunday, Nov. 15, 2026. The game will be played at FC Bayern Munich Arena and gives Detroit one of the league’s showcase trips abroad next season.
The international slate stretches across nine games on four continents, in seven countries and at eight stadiums, with the league opening in Melbourne, Australia, on Thursday, Sept. 10, when the San Francisco 49ers face the Los Angeles Rams. For the Lions, the Munich date is the headline entry in a schedule that also sends teams to Rio de Janeiro, London, Paris, Madrid and Mexico City before it closes with Minnesota against San Francisco on Sunday, Nov. 22.
Detroit’s trip to Germany carries extra weight because it will be the sixth regular-season game to be held in Germany and the third to be played in Munich. The NFL has now turned Munich into a regular stop on its international map, and the Lions become part of that pattern when they take on New England in mid-November. The full 2026 NFL schedule will be released on Thursday, May 14 at 8 p.m. ET, so the Munich matchup is one of the first concrete pieces of the league’s wider calendar.
The rest of the international slate shows how aggressively the league is pushing beyond its traditional base. Rio de Janeiro will host Baltimore and Dallas on Sunday, Sept. 27, the first game in that city and the third regular-season game in Brazil. London will then stage three consecutive games, starting with Indianapolis against Washington at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium on Sunday, Oct. 4, followed by Philadelphia against Jacksonville there on Sunday, Oct. 11, and Jacksonville against Houston at Wembley Stadium on Sunday, Oct. 18. Those three games bring the total number of regular-season games played in the U.K. since 2007 to 45.
France gets its first regular-season game on Sunday, Oct. 25, when Pittsburgh meets New Orleans in Paris at Stade de France. Madrid returns a week later on Sunday, Nov. 8, for Cincinnati against Atlanta at Bernabéu Stadium. Then comes Detroit’s date in Munich, followed by the final stop in Mexico City on Sunday, Nov. 22, when Minnesota faces San Francisco at Estadio Banorte. League executive Peter O’Reilly described the 2026 slate as the most expansive and ambitious international schedule yet, and the lineup backs that up without needing any spin. The question now is how the Lions handle a late-season trip that drops them into one of the NFL’s busiest overseas stages just before the calendar turns toward the league’s full schedule release.
