Red and gold down under: 49ers will play in NFL’s first-ever Australia game
The San Francisco 49ers will help make Australian sports history, though they’ll have to take a 16-hour flight each way to do so.
The NFL announced Thursday that the 49ers and Los Angeles Rams will play each other next fall in Australia in the NFL’s first-ever regular season game down under.
The game will be played at the Melbourne Cricket Ground, and the Rams will be the designated home team.
The date and time have not officially been announced, but if history is any indication, the game would likely happen Week 1 given the previous two games to happen in the Southern Hemisphere, both in Brazil the last two seasons, came as regular season openers. There is also a 19-hour time difference between Melbourne and the U.S. West Coast.
“Expanding to Melbourne, Australia, a beautiful city with a rich sports history, underlines our ambitions to become a global sport and accelerate international growth,” NFL commissioner Roger Goodell said in a statement. “We look forward to making history in what is an important market for the NFL and a significant next step in expanding our international footprint.”
The 49ers’ last international game was in November 2022, a 38-10 win over the Arizona Cardinals in Estadio Azteca in Mexico City. It was nine years after their previous international game, when they beat the Jacksonville Jaguars in October 2013 at Wembley Stadium in London.
The NFL is planning to play nine international games in 2026 including three games in London as well as games in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Munich, Germany and Madrid, Spain.
