The NFL will hold a record-setting nine international games during the upcoming season, but that record won’t last long.
At the NFL’s spring league meeting in Orlando, the owners voted to add two more games to the international schedule, which could bring the total to 10 in 2027, CBS Sports NFL Insider Jonathan Jones has revealed.
Under the current collective bargaining agreement (CBA), the NFL is only allowed to play 10 international games each year, so the league is now at the highest maximum number permitted under the CBA. The Jaguars game at Wembley Stadium doesn’t count toward the CBA total, so the league is allowed to schedule 10 games on top of that, which means there could be a total of 11 played in 2027.
NFL commissioner Roger Goodell has made it clear that he’d eventually like to see 16 international games per season, but we’re not quite there yet. The NFL Players Association and the NFL will have to ratify the CBA before that can happen, but it does feel like something that we’ll eventually see along with an 18-game regular season.
The owners also voted to change a key policy involving international games that could have a massive impact on the schedule and we’re going to break that down now.
Why the international slate will likely only get better
Not only is the NFL setting a record this year for the most international games ever played in one season, but this is arguably the best slate of games that the league has ever sent abroad.
Here’s what the international schedule looks like this year:
- Week 1: Melbourne — Rams vs. 49ers
- Week 3: Rio de Janeiro — Cowboys vs. Ravens
- Week 4: London — Commanders vs. Colts (Tottenham Hotspur Stadium)
- Week 5: London — Jaguars vs. Texans (Wembley Stadium)
- Week 6: London — Jaguars vs. Eagles (Tottenham Hotspur Stadium)
- Week 7: Paris — Saints vs. Steelers
- Week 9: Madrid — Falcons vs. Bengals
- Week 10: Munich — Lions vs. Patriots
- Week 11: Mexico City — 49ers vs. Vikings
The NFL first started playing in London back in 2007, but for the most part, the matchups sent to England just weren’t attractive. As a matter of fact, it took 15 years before the league sent a game to England that featured a game between two teams that BOTH had a winning record. The big reason why the matchups weren’t very attractive is because the league had a policy in place that allowed home international teams to protect up to five games on their schedule to prevent them from being moved abroad.
When the NFL had a 16-game schedule, there were eight home games and the international home team could protect 62.5% of those, so getting a good matchup was tough, but things have now changed. Under a new policy that was approved on Tuesday, teams won’t be allowed to protect ANY games going forward.
The protected games are a big reason why the Cowboys have almost never play abroad. If a team has the Cowboys on their home schedule, they don’t want to lose the game, so they end up protecting it, which prevents the matchup from being moved to an international location. Due to that fact, the Cowboys have only played one international game in franchise history and that came in 2014 against the Jaguars in London. This year, the Cowboys will be leaving the country again, but they’ll be serving as the home team for a matchup against the Ravens in Rio de Janeiro.
With the new policy in place, teams won’t be able to protect any of their home games, which means we could see more divisional games sent abroad and more games involving the NFL’s most popular teams like the Cowboys and Packers. Teams were protecting their best games, but they won’t be able to do that anymore and that’s a good thing, according to Mike North, the NFL’s vice president of broadcast planning.
“You know, you can’t have a team say, ‘Well, I don’t want my two best games ineligible for international.’ What kind of message does that send to the international fans,” North stated last week, via PFT.
North stated that eliminating the protection policy is a win for the NFL and for international fans.
“[I’m] hopeful that the protections continue to diminish and maybe even are eliminated entirely,” North stated in the days before Tuesday’s vote. “I think that would be better for everybody — not just the international fans, but also for the teams that might want to play internationally and keep getting blocked.”
What this all means is that there’s soon going to be more international games on the schedule and those games are going to be bigger and better than they’ve ever been.
