The Detroit Lions are clearly expecting to play an international game during the 2026 NFL season.
The NFL recently announced that there will be a total of seven international games for the 2025 season, and with all seven host teams already announced, we can deduce the Detroit Lions won’t play overseas this upcoming season. But team president Rod Wood spoke at the NFL owners meetings on Tuesday and said they are fully expecting to be on the international slate next year.
“I think it’s highly likely, especially given that in (20)26, we’ll have the extra home game,” Wood said to a small group of local Detroit reporters.
The news doesn’t come as much of a surprise given the last time the Lions played an international game was back in 2015 against the Kansas City Chiefs. The league recently made a rule that teams will host a home international game every eight years, and typically those teams are from the conference that has nine (instead of eight) home games on the schedule. In 2026, NFC teams will have an extra home game.
As for where they’ll end up going, Wood says they certainly have some interest in playing in Germany. Not only were they recently granted international marketing rights in the European country, but Amon-Ra St. Brown has German roots and has developed a fanbase over there as one of the few German-speaking players in the NFL.
“We’re certainly overdue,” Wood continued. “And with the markets that we’ve now taken some marketing interest in, certainly playing in Germany with St. Brown would be an interesting thing to think about.”
In addition to playing an international game, the Lions expanded their marketing rights this year, with Detroit now allowed to expand their reach into Brazil.
“Brazil is another market—there’s a lot of football fans down there,” Wood said. “There’s some connection: Ford has a big operation down there, so it could lead into some other sponsorships that are auto (industry) related, etc. Just build a better fanbase worldwide. I think, right now, we’ve got a lot of popular players, and playing to that is a good thing.”
