The Rams will be going down under in 2026, hosting an international game in Melbourne, Australia, the NFL announced on Wednesday.
The game, which will be the NFL’s first played in Australia, will take place at the Melbourne Cricket Ground, which can hold more than 100,000 spectators.
Speaking at a press conference on Wednesday in New Orleans ahead of the Super Bowl, NFL Executive Vice President of Club Business and League Events Peter O’Reilly said that, while scheduling still needs to be finalized, the expectation is the Melbourne game will be played in Week 1 of the 2026 season. This would allow teams an extra week to make the flight to Australia and adjust to the time difference – 19 hours ahead of Los Angeles.
“Australia is a really important market for the NFL globally,” O’Reilly added. “It’s a passionate nation of sporting fans, a passionate sporting culture with nearly seven million fans of the NFL.”
The Rams’ opponent, along with the date and kickoff time, will be announced at a later date.
The Rams have been building toward a potential home game in Australia since 2022, when the NFL awarded international territories to different teams as home markets to build fan engagement with marketing and commercialization. The Rams were the lone team assigned to Australia at the time, though the Philadelphia Eagles have since been granted the same rights in the country.
“As soon as this opportunity came about, we were the first to raise our hands and say, ‘We want to play in that first game in Australia,’” Rams president Kevin Demoff said Wednesday. “We’ve always wanted to be the team of Australia, the team of the Asia-Pacific continent. … This was always a vision of how we can go play abroad in a meaningful way and really go open the doors in the next country.”
The Rams were also granted international home marketing rights in Mexico and China in 2022, and have since added Japan, South Korea and New Zealand to that territory.
This game in Australia will represent the first international trip for the Rams since they played three London games from 2016-2019, after they moved from St. Louis but before construction of SoFi Stadium had been completed. The Rams went 2-1 in those contests.
Australia will be the seventh country outside the United States to host an NFL game. The league has played games in England annually since 2007 and has also played games in Mexico, Germany, Brazil and Canada. The Miami Dolphins will be the hosts for the first game in Spain in 2025 at Real Madrid ’s venue.
In 2026, the Rams are scheduled to play nine games at home: against the Seattle Seahawks, San Francisco 49ers, Arizona Cardinals, Dallas Cowboys, New York Giants, Kansas City Chiefs, Chargers and their same-place finishers in the NFC North and AFC East divisions.
This won’t be the first time a major U.S.-based sports league went to Australia with Major League Baseball playing a season-opening series between the Dodgers and the Arizona Diamondbacks in Sydney in 2014.
There have also been several major college football games played in Australia over the years, with the most recent being games between Stanford and Rice in 2017 and Cal and Hawaii in 2016.
The Associated Press contributed to this story.
