The NFL has played no shortage of international games of late.
In 2024, the league played five international games in three different countries. The Philadelphia Eagles and Green Bay Packers opened the season in Brazil, while England and Germany received a pair of games each.
That number is set to rise next season.
Starting in 2025, the NFL will be able to schedule up to eight international regular season games. While we don’t know the teams or weeks yet, the league announced that one of the eight games will be played at the Olympic Stadium in Berlin, Germany.
Coming to Olympic Stadium in 2025… the first-ever regular season game in Berlin! 🇩🇪 @NFLDeutschland pic.twitter.com/2kDRMpu2rt
— NFL (@NFL) December 11, 2024
The NFL has played five games in Germany, the most recent of which saw the Carolina Panthers come away with a 20-17 overtime win over the New York Giants.
An interesting wrinkle to the Berlin game is it marks the first time the NFL has played a regular season game in the city. The previous five have been in Munich or Frankfurt, in the home stadiums of Bayern Munich and Eintracht Frankfurt, respectively.
However, Berlin has previous experience with NFL games. Olympic Stadium hosted five American Bowls, a preseason precursor to the league’s international expansion that saw two teams play an international exhibition game. Additionally, the Berlin Fire won the NFL Europe championship three times.
“Germany has a rich tradition of American football, and the NFL has a deep history with the city of Berlin,” NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said in a statement.
“We first held a preseason game at the Olympic Stadium 34 years ago, before it was home to NFL Europe’s Berlin Thunder in the early 2000s. Now, with almost 20 million NFL fans in Germany, we’ll make a historic return to the city playing a regular season game for the first time as we open the next chapter in our relationship with Berlin,” Goodell added.
Earlier this year, the NFL announced that the league would also play a regular season game in Spain for the first time.
[NFL]
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