Kent Bewley's News Story Collection

The NFL schedule release is upon us for the 2026 regular season, but before the entire schedules for every NFL team are announced, there are slight leaks of special games that some teams are playing in. The leaks include the NFL’s international game slate and with NFC teams slated for an extra ninth home game some of them were selected and announced to be the “home team” in games occurring in London, Madrid, Munich, Melbourne, Paris, Rio de Janeiro and Mexico City. The Minnesota Vikings were not slated as a designated home team for any international games after playing overseas in back-to-back weeks last season against the Pittsburgh Steelers and Cleveland Browns in Dublin and London respectively. They split both those games and had four games in the past four seasons occur outside of the United States. Now in 2026, their first game and opponent was just leaked as part of the NFL’s international game schedule, which is only seeking to expand further as commissioner Roger Goodell looks to continue growing the league’s brand in countries that are hungry to see the specter of American football.

The Vikings are scheduled to play a road game against the San Francisco 49ers, but it won’t be happening at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, Calif. Instead it is rumored that it will be occurring at Estadio Banorte(formerly Estadio Azteca) in Mexico City on Sun, Nov 22. This will be a Sunday night game broadcast by NBC. The Vikings will be playing in Mexico for the first time ever while the 49ers are making their third appearance playing in a country where a lot of their fan base has roots in. The Niners played in the first ever NFL regular season game outside of the United States when they faced the Arizona Cardinals on Oct 2, 2005. They had a rematch against Arizona in Nov 2022 and won by a final score of 38-10. Some of the players in that game for San Francisco remain on the active roster such as George Kittle, Christian McCaffrey, Trent Williams, Nick Bosa, Fred Warner and Brock Purdy, who appeared in garbage time in relief of Jimmy Garappolo in the blowout win. Kyler Murray did not start that game at QB for the Cardinals because he was injured with a lower extremity injury that eventually turned into a torn ACL a few weeks later. Now, Murray could have a chance to seek redemption in Mexico City, assuming he is the starting QB in Week 12 of this season for Minnesota.

The Vikings have a couple of advantages when it comes to this game potentially. Firstly, they are almost in the same time zone as Mexico City(which is in the Mountain Time Zone and Mexico got rid of Daylight Savings Time in 2022 for most of its states) and wouldn’t have to fly overseas and plenty of time zones to the east to compete in an NFL game. Secondly, they won’t have to make a trip to the Bay Area to face the Niners. They are 0-3 in games at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, including a 27-10 loss in the 2019 NFC Divisional Round. The one thing that could weight heavily on both teams’ chests(literally) is the elevation where Mexico City is located at above sea level. It is 7,349 feet above sea level, which is two thousand-plus feet more than Denver. So, both the Vikings and Niners will be adjusting to the atmospheric pressure they will be feeling in competing in the NFL’s sixth-ever regular season game in the country bordering the U.S to the south.

Estadio Banorte is the renovated and sponsored version of Estadio Azteca and will play host to a few games in the 2026 FIFA World Cup for the El Tri national soccer team of Mexico and a couple of other nations. The venue is definitely more up to standard of hosting NFL games in the coming future and once again serves as the final game on the NFL’s international schedule on the Sunday before Thanksgiving.

Other international games include the 49ers playing a road game in Melbourne, Australia against the Los Angeles Rams on opening week, the Baltimore Ravens taking on the Dallas Cowboys in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, the Washington Commanders hosting the Indianapolis Colts in London, the Jacksonville Jaguars playing a pair of home games in London against the Philadelphia Eagles and Houston Texans, the New Orleans Saints hosting the Pittsburgh Steelers in Paris, France, the Atlanta Falcons playing against the Cincinnati Bengals in Madrid, Spain, and the Detroit Lions hosting the New England Patriots in Munich, Germany. The literal topping on the cake will be Vikings-Niners in Mexico City.

So, hopefully everyone has their TVs on early or late(one benefit for 49ers fans is that their team will be playing in the evening Pacific time in both their overseas games, the Melbourne game has a mid-morning local kickoff time, which translates to 5:30-ish on the West Coast on Thur, Sept 10). The fans of the Vikings also will get to watch an international game in the evening and not in the early morning hours on a Sunday. Five international games in five seasons might be a bit much for Minnesota, but it’s clearly a new normal for an ever-evolving NFL that wants to cater to every available audience that it has outside of American borders. The rest of the games on the Vikings schedule for 2026 will be leaked on Thur, May 14 and there will be a thorough analysis of those. For now, Vikings fans should be going pretty loco for Sunday night football in Mexico.