The NFL just wrapped a record-breaking season. Here’s why next year’s going to be even bigger

The Super Bowl is ended last week, but plans for the 2026 NFL season are already in place.

In the days leading up to the game on Feb. 8, the NFL announced that Paris, Melbourne and Rio de Janeiro will host regular-season games for the first time as part of a record nine overseas games next season — two more than in 2025.

“Over the last three or four years, as we’ve started to expand the number of games that we’ve had the opportunity to play outside the U.S., the last three years we’ve really zeroed in, and 2025 was the year we marked,” said Peter O’Reilly, the NFL’s executive vice president for international and league events.

The NFL’s International Series began in its current form in 2007 with the first London game at Wembley Stadium. For the next five years, only one game per season was played in London, with many owners skeptical about sacrificing revenue from home games in a market dominated by the Premier League.

Now, nearly 20 years later, there is talk of the league extending the season to allow for even more overseas games.

“The possibility of an 18-game schedule requires more work — it requires alignment and negotiation with the players union — but that opportunity to bring more regular-season football, and in turn the opportunity to play beyond this current number of international games, is something that we’re certainly considering,” O’Reilly said.

Every one of the NFL’s 32 teams has played a regular-season game outside the United States and is signed up to the league’s Global Markets Program.

Launched in January 2022, the program awards clubs international marketing rights to help them build brand awareness and explore partnerships and commercial opportunities.

Teams with geographical, cultural or historical ties to a country are often granted rights in those territories. For instance, the Arizona Cardinals have rights in neighboring Mexico; the Miami Dolphins, supported by a large Hispanic and Latino community, have rights in Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Mexico and Spain; and the Pittsburgh Steelers, whose owners have ancestral ties to Ireland, were awarded rights there in 2023.

The Rooney family, the Steelers’ majority owners, trace their roots to Ireland, where their ancestors emigrated from in the 1840s before eventually settling in Pittsburgh. Art Rooney founded the team in 1933, and those ties have remained strong through charity, cultural connections and politics — including Art’s son, Dan Rooney, serving as U.S. ambassador to Ireland in 2009.

“The Rooneys and the Pittsburgh Steelers are coming home, literally, and that’s a lovely thing,” said Patrick O’Donovan, Ireland’s minister for culture, tourism and sport.

“One of the first things I did after becoming minister for cultural, communications and sport was to agree to the government’s involvement with bringing the NFL to Dublin for the first time. So it’s a collaboration between the NFL and the Pittsburgh Steelers, the Gaelic Athletic Association and the government of Ireland,” he said.

The Irish government sees the country’s connection to the Rooney family and the Steelers as an opportunity worth capitalizing on. As part of the agreement to host the game, officials committed 10 million euros ($11.9 million) in public funding — half as a license fee paid to the NFL and the other half for transportation, security and venue arrangements.

But according to Fáilte Ireland, the country’s tourism development authority, the event generated an estimated 64 million euros in additional economic activity.

The Dublin game was also a major success for television viewership. It ranked as the second most-watched NFL Network international game on record, drawing 7.9 million viewers in the U.S. — a 68% increase from the 2024 international-game average.

“It’s really less about the financials around the game itself. Obviously, these games are profitable, but we see them as a pebble drop — you drop a pebble, it ripples out well beyond the game itself,” O’Reilly said.

As the NFL’s international ambitions grow, so do those of other major sports leagues. The NBA has played multiple regular-season games outside the United States, and several competitive soccer matches were played outside their local markets in 2025. If financial returns remain strong, more are likely to follow.