Cage The Elephant will headline the halftime show at the 2026 NFL Munich Game on Sunday, Nov. 15, giving the league another live music anchor for its NFL International Games 2026 slate. The performance will come during a game between the New England Patriots and Detroit Lions at the FC Bayern Munich Arena, with kickoff set for 3:30 p.m. CET, 9:30 a.m. ET.
The announcement lands now because Munich is one part of a wider international push that includes a record seven halftime shows presented by American Express across seven countries and four continents. For the league, it is a clean signal that the game in Germany is being treated not just as a football date, but as one of the season’s showcase events.
Cage The Elephant brings a résumé that fits that pitch. The band is a two-time GRAMMY® Award winner for Best Rock Album, has more than 10 billion streams and 13 number-one records on Alternative radio, and most recently toured the U.S. as special guests on the Oasis Live ’25 Tour. Matt Shultz said the group has played a lot of shows in Germany over the years and that the crowds there have always given the band everything they have.
Shultz also framed the Munich halftime slot as a different kind of pressure, saying a halftime show is one shot in front of a stadium and a global audience, with every second needing to count. That makes the booking more than a simple entertainment add-on. It is a live television moment built to land in a country where football fans already know the band and where the stage is meant to feel bigger than the game itself.
The friction is that Munich is being sold as one of the marquee music stops in the league’s international run, yet halftime performers have so far been announced for only some of the 2026 NFL International Games. The Jonas Brothers will perform at the 2026 NFL Melbourne Game on Thursday, Sept. 10, Pedro Sampaio and Ricky Martin are set for the 2026 NFL Rio Game on Sunday, Sept. 27, Ayra Starr will perform at the 2026 NFL London Game on Sunday, Oct. 11, and The Warning are scheduled for the 2026 NFL Mexico City Game on Sunday, Nov. 22. The rest of the entertainment picture has not been filled in publicly.
For Munich, the booking also fits a pattern the NFL has been building for years. The 2026 NFL Munich Game will be the third regular-season NFL game staged in Munich after games in 2022 and 2024, and the league says the city will host again in 2028 as part of a multi-year agreement with FC Bayern Munich and the City of Munich. Cage The Elephant’s full performance will be shown live in Germany free to air on RTL and on Sky Sport. What follows next is the piece fans will be waiting for: the rest of the entertainment lineup around the 2026 NFL Munich Game, and whether the league can match the scale of the football with the music still to come.
