Around the World in 80 Days isn’t just the name of a famous novel, it’s also likely going to be the theme for the San Francisco 49ers’ season in 2026. The 49ers are going to serve as the home team for the NFL’s game in Mexico City this year, the league announced Wednesday.
Normally, that wouldn’t necessarily qualify as a big announcement, but the 49ers are also playing in Australia, so they’ll be doing a historic amount of traveling in 2026. With the two trips, the 49ers will become the first team ever to play multiple international games in nonconsecutive weeks.
The Jaguars have played back-to-back games in London multiple times. The Vikings topped that last season when they became the first team to play in two different foreign countries in a single season when they played back-to-back games in Ireland and England. In each of those instances, the Vikings and Jaguars got to cram two games into one trip, but that won’t be the case for San Francisco.
The 49ers’ unprecedented international schedule will see them travel to Australia to play the Rams in a game that’s expected to be played in Week 1. The game in Mexico City will be played in either Week 13 or Week 14 at Estadio Banorte (formerly Estadio Azteca).
With the 49ers now playing in two international games, that means they’ll be traveling more than 38,100 miles in 2026, which would be the most ever for a team during a regular season in NFL history. The 2025 Chargers and 2016 Rams both topped 37,000 miles, but no team has hit 38,000 miles. The Rams are also playing in Australia this year, but their current travel estimate is only expected to be about 35,000 miles for the 2026 season.
On top of playing two international games, the 49ers also have two cross-country trips with games at Atlanta and at New York against the Giants. If the NFL combined those two games into one road trip, that would shave almost 4,000 miles off San Francisco’s travel schedule, and in that case, they wouldn’t break the all-time travel record.
Either way, the 49ers will be doing a lot of traveling this year and they seem fine with that. They actually lobbied to play in the Mexico game, which is something owner Jed York revealed during Super Bowl week.
“For us, Mexico is one of our markets. We will most likely give up a home game this season to play abroad, and Mexico is always No. 1 on my list,” York said.
The NFL has held five games in Mexico City over the past 21 years, and the 49ers have played in two of them, including the most recent one, which came in a 38-10 win over the Cardinals back in 2022. The 49ers also faced the Cardinals in Mexico City back in 2005, which marked the first time ever that the NFL held a regular-season game outside of the United States.
The NFL has regularly looked to put a Mexico game on the schedule, but playing there wasn’t an option over the past three seasons due to ongoing renovations at Estadio Banorte. During Roger Goodell’s annual news conference at the Super Bowl, the NFL commissioner revealed that the Mexico game will be played in December, which is why we already know that it will happen in either Week 13 or Week 14. (Under NFL rules, international games can’t be scheduled after Week 14.) This means that the 49ers will be looking at going around the world in roughly 90 days, since the Mexico game will come about 90 to 100 days after their game in Melbourne.
The 49ers’ home schedule in 2026 consists of the Cardinals, Rams, Seahawks, Eagles, Commanders, Vikings, Broncos, Raiders and Dolphins, so San Francisco will be playing one of those nine teams in Mexico. You can probably rule out the Rams since the NFL won’t send both 49ers-Rams games out of the country. The Commanders also seem unlikely since they’re scheduled to play in Europe.
Of the six games the NFL has held in Mexico City since 2005, two involved the 49ers facing the Cardinals, so Arizona could certainly be an option — especially since the Cards have marketing rights in Mexico. If the NFL decides to go with an AFC-NFC matchup, which has been popular for international games, then the Broncos would make sense. The Raiders are also popular in Mexico and have played two games there, but it would make more sense to keep that game in the Bay Area since the Raiders still have plenty of fans there from their time in Oakland.
Mexico will be one of a record-setting nine international games for the NFL this year. Here’s a look at the full list:
- Melbourne, Australia
- London
- London
- London
- Munich
- Rio De Janeiro
- Madrid
- Paris
- Mexico City
So far, we already know the “home” teams for three of those games: Rams (Australia), Saints (Paris), Cowboys (Rio De Janeiro). We also know three other teams will serve as international home teams, but we don’t know where they’ll be playing yet (Commanders, Lions and Falcons).
