The National Football League will stage a regular season game in Australia for the first time, at the Melbourne Cricket Ground, as part of a multi-year commitment to play in the Victorian capital from 2026.
Peter O’Reilly, head of NFL International, said the Los Angeles Rams will be the designated home team for the contest at the 172-year-old sporting coliseum during a press conference in New Orleans, where the Super Bowl takes place on Sunday between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Philadelphia Eagles.
No date or kick-off time was given but the game could potentially clash with the opening week of AFL finals, given the NFL starts in the first week of September. O’Reilly said the deal would not have happened without the AFL’s support.
“This doesn’t happen without the AFL’s partnership as an important player in this conversation … that relationship can go beyond just playing [at the MCG],” O’Reilly said. “This is an incredible league and we can learn from each other. That partnership and relationship is important to us.”
The NFL said the Rams’ opponents at the 100,000-seat venue will be announced in the future but it appears it will not be the Eagles, who had been tabbed as the “likely” candidate in a Herald Sun report on Sunday.
“It’s an impossibility because it’s the Rams and we’re at home,” Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie said during a rare availability at Monday night’s Super Bowl media night. “We’re not giving up a home game.”
According to the NFL’s scheduling formula, Los Angeles are slated to face the Eagles in Philadelphia during the 2026 season. The seven confirmed home opponents on the Rams’ schedule are the Chiefs, the Arizona Cardinals, the San Francisco 49ers, the Seattle Seahawks, the Dallas Cowboys, the New York Giants and the Los Angeles Chargers. They will also host the NFC North team which finishes with the same division ranking in 2025.
The Eagles had appeared to be a logical candidate for a Melbourne game since they share international marketing rights in Australia with the Rams as part of the NFL’s Global Markets Program. Additionally, their star offensive tackle Jordan Mailata, who grew up playing rugby league and reached the NFL through the International Player Pathway Program, can become the first Australian to win a Super Bowl if they defeat the Chiefs on Sunday night.
The announcement marks the latest expansion of the NFL’s global footprint. The league first launched its international series in 2005, since bringing more than 50 regular-season games to London, Munich, Frankfurt, Mexico City and Toronto. This year the Eagles and the Green Bay Packers met in Sao Paulo for the first ever NFL game in South America – Philadelphia were the designated home team – while the Miami Dolphins have been named hosts for the first game in Spain next season at the Bernabéu Stadium.
Lurie said he fully welcomes the NFL’s international ambitions, but can’t sign off on giving up a precious home game for the second time in three years.
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“We’ve fully endorsed the globalisation of the sport,” Lurie said. “We love our superstar from Australia, we’re a natural team to play there, we are a marketing partner with Australia and New Zealand, we’re one of the designated partners. So if there’s an opportunity to be an away team there, we will embrace that.”
As many as eight games per season will be played outside the United States next season as part of the International Series agreement. The NFL has confirmed five of these so far: three in London, one in Berlin and one in Madrid. But a first regular-season game in the Asia-Pacific region – the NFL staged a pre-season game in Sydney back in 1999 – represents the league’s most ambitious foray to date.
“Expanding to Melbourne, a beautiful city with a rich sports history, underlines our ambitions to become a global sport and accelerate international growth,” NFL commissioner Roger Goodell. “Together with the Victorian state government … we look forward to making history in what is an important market for the NFL and a significant next step in expanding our international footprint.”
