The NFL Abroad: Every International Game Since 2005, and Why the "Home" Team Keeps Losing

Since the NFL first took a regular-season game outside the United States in 2005, it has played 62 of them in nine cities — and the 2026 schedule adds nine more in three new cities, bringing the running total to 71 games across 12 cities on four continents. Every one of the 32 franchises has now made the trip. And the strangest fact in the whole ledger is this: being the designated home team abroad is a disadvantage. The "home" side is 28-33-1 in international games.

It started in Mexico City. On October 2, 2005, Arizona beat San Francisco 31–14 at Estadio Azteca in front of a crowd that made the league's expansion ambitions obvious. London followed in 2007, and the city has since hosted 42 games — 27 at Wembley, 12 at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, and 3 at Twickenham — with three more in 2026 pushing it to 45. No other city is close: Toronto's six games are next, then Mexico City's five.

The Jacksonville era and the Buffalo misadventure

Two franchises tell the story of playing abroad better than any league press release. Jacksonville turned London into a second home: 14 international games, 12 of them as the designated host, appearing in every London season from 2013 through 2025 except the pandemic year. The record is a perfectly balanced 7-7 — including the franchise's best day abroad, a 44–7 dismantling of Baltimore in 2017, and its worst, a 42–10 loss to San Francisco in its 2013 debut.

Buffalo's international history is shorter and considerably darker. The Bills played six "home" games in Toronto from 2008 through 2013 and lost five of them, the lone win a 23–0 shutout of Washington in 2011 — one of only three shutouts ever recorded abroad. Add two London losses to Jacksonville and Buffalo sits at 1-7 outside the United States, the worst record of any franchise with more than a few trips. The Toronto Series was quietly discontinued; the data suggests Bills fans didn't miss it.

At the other end, Minnesota has made a habit of winning on foreign soil: 5-1, the best record of any team with more than a couple of trips abroad. Five of the six games were in London — where the Vikings have won at all three stadiums the league has used — and the sixth was 2025's trip to Dublin, their lone defeat abroad, played a week before yet another London win.

And then there's Dallas

The most valuable franchise in the sport has played abroad exactly once: a 31–17 win over Jacksonville at Wembley on November 9, 2014. That makes the Cowboys the league's least-traveled team by a wide margin — every other franchise has at least two international games. It also makes 2026 notable: Dallas hosts Baltimore at the Maracanã in Rio de Janeiro in September, the franchise's second-ever international game and Brazil's second city on the map.

The oddities file

The only tie in international history is Washington 27, Cincinnati 27 in London, 2016 — a game that ran through overtime without resolution. The biggest blowout is New England 45, Rams 7 at Wembley in 2012. The highest-scoring game came early, New Orleans outlasting San Diego 37–32 in 2008; the lowest was the famous Frankfurt slog of 2023, Indianapolis 10, New England 6. Mexico City, for its part, has been no kinder to its designated hosts than anywhere else: Arizona (twice), the Raiders (twice), and the Chargers each got a "home" game there and went a combined 2-3 — both wins coming in the first two visits, before New England, Kansas City, and San Francisco spoiled the next three. When the league returns in 2026, the building itself will answer to a new name: Estadio Banorte, the renamed Azteca.

2026: three new cities

The announced 2026 slate is the league's biggest international swing yet: nine games, including first-ever visits to Melbourne (49ers at Rams, at the Melbourne Cricket Ground), Rio de Janeiro (Ravens at Cowboys, Maracanã), and Paris (Steelers at Saints, Stade de France), alongside returns to London, Madrid, Munich, and Mexico City. Twelve cities, seven countries, four continents — for a league that played its first game abroad twenty-one years ago.

Think you can name all twelve host cities? That's the International Hosts quiz — one guess fills every game a city held, and three wrong cities end your run.