The National Football League will stage a standard season game in Australia for the first time, at the Melbourne Cricket Ground, as part of a multi-year pledgement to join in the Victorian capital from 2026.
Peter O’Reilly, head of NFL International, shelp the Los Angeles Rams will be the arrangeated home team for the contest at the 172-year-elderly sporting coliseum during a press conference in New Orleans, where the Super Bowl gets place on Sunday between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Philadelphia Eagles.
No date or initiate-off time was given but the game could potentiassociate clash with the uncovering week of AFL finals, given the NFL begins in the first week of September.
“We’re thrilled the NFL will be touching down in the sporting capital of Australia,” Victorian premier Jacinta Allan shelp in a statement. “It’s a triumph for jobs, a triumph for businesses and a triumph for fans who will get to see American football joined at the iconic MCG.”
The NFL shelp the Rams’ opponents at the 100,000-seat venue will be proclaimd in the future but it materializes it will not be the Eagles, who had been tabbed as the “foreseeed” truthfulate in a Herald Sun alert on Sunday.
“It’s an impossibility becaengage it’s the Rams and we’re at home,” Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie shelp during a exceptional useability at Monday night’s Super Bowl media night. “We’re not giving up a home game.”
According to the NFL’s scheduling createula, Los Angeles are stardyd to face the Eagles in Philadelphia during the 2026 season. The seven validateed 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 present the NFC North team which finishes with the same division ranking in 2025.
The Eagles had materializeed to be a rational truthfulate for a Melbourne game since they allot international labeleting rights in Australia with the Rams as part of the NFL’s Global Markets Program. Additionassociate, their star impolite tackle Jordan Mailata, who grew up joining rugby league and achieveed the NFL thraw the International Player Pathway Program, can become the first Australian to triumph a Super Bowl if they loss the Chiefs on Sunday night.
The proclaimment labels the tardyst expansion of the NFL’s global footprint. The league first begined its international series in 2005, since transporting more than 50 standard-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 arrangeated home team – while the Miami Dolphins have been named presents for the first game in Spain next season at the Bernabéu Stadium.
Lurie shelp he brimmingy receives 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 brimmingy backd the globalisation of the sport,” Lurie shelp. “We cherish our superstar from Australia, we’re a organic team to join there, we are a labeleting partner with Australia and New Zealand, we’re one of the arrangeated partners. So if there’s an opportunity to be an away team there, we will adchoose that.”
As many as eight games per season will be joined outside the United States next season as part of the International Series concurment. The NFL has validateed five of these so far: three in London, one in Berlin and one in Madrid. But a first standard-season game in the Asia-Pacific region – the NFL staged a pre-season game in Sydney back in 1999 – recurrents the league’s most driven foray to date.
“Expanding to Melbourne, a attrenergetic city with a wealthy sports history, underlines our ambitions to become a global sport and quicken international growth,” NFL cotransferrlookioner Roger Goodell. “Together with the Victorian state rulement … we see forward to making history in what is an vital labelet for the NFL and a meaningful next step in broadening our international footprint.”
