NFL Tokyo Game: Could Japan Host an NFL Game in 2027?

An NFL regular-season game in Tokyo could happen as early as 2027, but nothing has been confirmed. On 23 October 2026, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell told the NFL Daily show: "Listen, Tokyo is clearly on our list, whether it's next year or the year after." That points to 2027 or 2028. No date, stadium or teams have been announced, and the league has not said which season it will be.

Last updated: 2 November 2026.

So the honest answer is maybe, and the maybe is getting louder. Six weeks after 100,021 people watched the 49ers and Rams in Melbourne on a Friday morning, the commissioner is talking about Japan as a when, not an if. If you searched for the NFL Tokyo game, this page pulls every confirmed fact into one place, labels the guesswork as guesswork, and explains what a trip to a game on the other side of the world would actually involve.

NFL Tokyo game at a glance

• Status: not confirmed. Goodell says Tokyo is on the list for next year or the year after.
• Most likely seasons: 2027 or 2028, based on Goodell's own words.
• Stadium: not announced. The Tokyo Dome hosted the NFL's preseason games in Japan for years.
• Teams: not announced. The Los Angeles Rams hold Japan marketing rights under the NFL's Global Markets Program.
• Why it is possible now: owners cleared a path in May 2026 to as many as 10 international games from 2027.
• History: the NFL has played 14 preseason games in Japan since 1976, but never a regular-season game.

If you want the commercial side first, our NFL International Series page is where we cover hospitality for the league's games outside the United States. The rest of this page is the story itself.

What did Roger Goodell say about an NFL game in Tokyo?

Goodell made the comments in an interview with NFL Daily on Friday 23 October 2026, reported the same day by ESPN and by Pro Football Talk. He was in Paris at the time, with the league preparing for its first regular-season game in France. His full line was: "Listen, Tokyo is clearly on our list, whether it's next year or the year after." He added: "It's coming at some point in the near future."

That is about as specific as a commissioner gets without a press release. He did not name a stadium, a week or a team, and he left himself a whole extra season of room. But "next year or the year after" is a narrower window than anything he had said before, and it came from the man who signs off the schedule.

It was not the first time Japan had come up. In July 2026, at Fanatics Fest, Goodell told Sportico that he had far more than one new market in mind. Asked to pick one, he said: "Not one, I got about 10." On Japan specifically, CBS Sports reported him saying: "We had a game in Tokyo, but it was a preseason game so we want to do a regular-season game now." Four months later, the language has moved from wanting to planning.

He also made it clear that Tokyo is part of a bigger plan rather than a one-off stunt. Pro Football Talk quoted him saying: "We're planning on playing global. That's where we're going." Here is the clip from NFL Daily itself.

Why 2027 is suddenly realistic: the ten-game rule

The reason a Tokyo game has gone from talking point to genuine possibility is a vote taken in May. At the NFL's spring league meeting in Orlando, ESPN reported in May 2026 that the league had cleared a path to as many as 10 international games starting in 2027, up from a cap of eight.

Owners also changed a rule that mattered just as much. Until then, teams could protect up to two of their home games from being moved abroad. From now on, according to the same ESPN report, no team can protect any home game from international play. In plain terms, the league can now send almost anyone's home game overseas, and that gives it far more room to build a fixture in Asia.

Peter O'Reilly, the league's executive vice president for club business, international and league events, put it simply at the time: "There's a path to 10 [international games] in 2027." He also described Asian markets as ones that "have complexities [due to travel] but are important" to the league. By late October, ESPN reported O'Reilly saying a tenth game was under consideration for 2027 and that Asia was among the "new regions" being looked at.

The collective bargaining agreement with the players already allows up to 10 international games a season, ESPN reported, and CBS Sports noted that the agreement runs through the 2030 season. Goodell has said his long-term ambition is at least 16 international games a year. A Tokyo game is not the end point of that plan. It is one of the obvious next steps.

Where 2026 left the map

The 2026 season already set a record. CBS Sports counted nine international games in seven countries on four continents: Melbourne in Week 1, Rio de Janeiro in Week 3, three games in London, Paris in Week 7, Madrid, Munich and Mexico City. Goodell told Pro Football Talk that the league chose "Rio rather than São Paulo" this year, which tells you the league is now picking cities, not just countries. Going from nine games to ten leaves exactly one new slot, and Asia is the one big region on the map the regular season has never visited.

Pre-game ceremony at the first regular-season NFL game in Germany, Allianz Arena, Munich, 13/11/2022. Photo: Staff Sgt. Breanne Donnell, US National Guard, public domain

Melbourne: the blueprint for an NFL game in Tokyo

If you want to know how a Tokyo game might work, look at what happened in Australia this September. The San Francisco 49ers beat the Los Angeles Rams 27-7 at the Melbourne Cricket Ground on Friday 11 September 2026 local time, in the first NFL regular-season game ever played in Australia. The crowd was 100,021, which the Irish Examiner reported as the seventh-largest regular-season crowd in NFL history. Kick-off was 10.35am on a Friday in Melbourne.

Goodell has pointed to that game again and again. "On a Friday morning at 10:30, to have 100,000 people in the stadium, it was just an incredible feeling for us," he said in October. "I think it's opened up new opportunities for us." The point he keeps making is about travel. Melbourne is further from the American West Coast than Tokyo is, and the league now has proof that it can fly two teams across the Pacific, play a meaningful game, and fly them home again. In his words: "The travel is something we think we can manage and do it without impacting negatively on the teams."

He framed it as a learning process too: "So each of these we learned something from and we benefit and we also open those other doors." Tokyo is the most obvious door left.

The game did not go well for the Rams. Rams coach Sean McVay told reporters: "They outplayed us in every facet. I didn't do nearly a good enough job." Brock Purdy, the 49ers quarterback, kept it simple: "It comes down to playing our style of ball and doing what coaches love to do and running our plays." If the Rams are handed the Tokyo game, they will want a better trip than that one. The full highlights, from the NFL's own channel:

Has the NFL played in Japan before?

Yes, but never for points. ESPN reported that the NFL has played 14 preseason games in Japan since 1976, the most recent in 2005, between the Atlanta Falcons and the Indianapolis Colts. CBS Sports put it another way: the league played a dozen games at the Tokyo Dome between 1989 and 2005. Most of them were part of the American Bowl series, the preseason games the league took around the world in the 1980s and 1990s.

Here is the detail that makes the current talk fun. The very first American Bowl at the Tokyo Dome, on 6 August 1989, was the Los Angeles Rams against the San Francisco 49ers. The Rams won 16-13. Thirty-seven years later, the same two teams opened the 2026 season in Melbourne. If the league wanted a neat bit of symmetry for its first regular-season game in Japan, it would not have to look far.

The 49ers, for what it is worth, have a poor record in Japanese preseason games. They lost to the Rams in Tokyo in 1989, to the Denver Broncos in Tokyo in 1995, and to Washington at the Osaka Dome in 2002. Not that any of those counted. The next one would.

A baseball game under the roof of the Tokyo Dome, Tokyo, 02/04/2019. Photo: 江戸村のとくぞう, CC BY-SA 4.0

Which NFL teams could play in Tokyo?

No teams have been named, and anyone who tells you otherwise is guessing. What we do have is a set of clues, and one of them is much stronger than the rest.

The Los Angeles Rams: the front-runner on paper

Since 2022, the NFL's Global Markets Program has handed individual teams international marketing rights in specific countries. CBS Sports reported in July that the Rams hold a stake in Japan through that program and presented them as a front-runner for a Japan game. My read is that a team with marketing rights in a country has every reason to want to play there. That is the strongest single clue in this whole story, but it is still a clue, not an announcement.

The Washington Commanders: the wild card

CBS Sports also flagged Washington, for a more personal reason. Former quarterback Robert Griffin III was born in Okinawa, Japan, and current quarterback Jayden Daniels has Japanese ancestry through his great-grandmother. That is a nice story rather than a business case, but the league loves a story when it is choosing who goes where.

Everyone else, now that home games cannot be protected

The May rule change matters here. With teams no longer able to shield their home games from international play, the league is not limited to clubs that volunteer. My read, and it is only that, is that the first Tokyo game will involve at least one West Coast team, because the flight from California to Japan is the shortest route the league has to Asia. The Rams fit that. So do the 49ers, who play in both Melbourne and Mexico City this season and have a habit of saying yes to long trips. Nothing about any of this is confirmed.

Where would an NFL game in Tokyo be played?

No stadium has been announced. The two names that come up most often are the obvious ones, and they offer very different kinds of night.

The Tokyo Dome: the NFL's old home in Japan

The Tokyo Dome is where the league played most of its Japanese preseason games, from the 1989 Rams and 49ers game onwards. It is a covered stadium in the middle of the city, home to Japanese baseball, and it sits inside a busy entertainment district with restaurants, shops and a big wheel around it. A roof matters for a game played at an unusual time of day in an unusual time of year, because it takes the weather out of the plan entirely.

The Tokyo Dome and the surrounding entertainment district from the air at night, Tokyo, 11/04/2008. Photo: Lukas, CC BY 2.0

The Japan National Stadium: the Olympic option

The other headline candidate is the Japan National Stadium, the main stadium of the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games. It is an open-air stadium with a striking timber design, close to the Shinjuku skyline. It would give the league a bigger, more modern stage and a ready-made Olympic story. My read is that the choice between the two will come down to the date the league picks: a roof is a strong argument for the Dome late in the season, while an early-season game would make the National Stadium more attractive. Again, nothing has been announced, and the league has not said it is talking to either venue.

The Japan National Stadium with the Shinjuku skyline behind, Tokyo, 2020. Photo: Arne Müseler, CC BY-SA 3.0 DE

What time would an NFL Tokyo game kick off in the UK?

Nobody knows yet, but the maths is worth doing. Japan does not change its clocks. Tokyo is nine hours ahead of the UK in winter and eight hours ahead in summer, and around 13 hours ahead of the US East Coast when America is on summer time. Melbourne kicked off on a Friday morning local time so that American fans could watch on Thursday evening. If the league did the same in Tokyo, a mid-morning kick-off would land in prime time the evening before in New York, and somewhere around 1am to 2am in London. That is my read of how the league would think about it, not a published plan.

For British fans watching at home, that means a late night. For anyone travelling to Tokyo, it means the game takes up a morning and leaves the rest of the day free, which is a very different trip from a Sunday afternoon game in Europe.

The NFL's international games in 2026, and where Tokyo fits

Tokyo would join a calendar that already reaches across Europe. Two of the three London games this autumn were played at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium: the Eagles vs Jaguars and Colts vs Commanders fixtures. The Jacksonville Jaguars are the team most tied to the British capital, and ESPN noted that their own London game sits outside the international count. Our NFL London Games page covers the British side of the series, and our guide to which NFL London game to take clients to explains how companies chose between them.

Miami Dolphins against Jacksonville Jaguars at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, London, 17/10/2021. Photo: Tony Hisgett, CC BY 2.0

Paris joined the list on 25 October with the Steelers vs Saints at Stade de France, the first NFL regular-season game in France. Two European games are still to come this month: the Bengals vs Falcons in Madrid on Sunday 8 November and the Patriots vs Lions in Munich on Sunday 15 November, both at 3.30pm local time, the Munich game at the Allianz Arena. Our NFL international games 2026 guide covers the travel side of all six European fixtures.

Each of those cities started as a first. Munich hosted the first regular-season game in Germany in November 2022, and Paris and Melbourne both had their first this year. My read of the pattern is that the league tests a new market with one game, judges the crowd and the interest, and then comes back. Tokyo would follow the same route, with one important difference: it would be the first regular-season game in Asia.

Planning an NFL trip to Tokyo: what a premium package looks like

This is where a Tokyo game becomes something very different from a day at Tottenham. A London game is a day out. A European game is a weekend. A Tokyo game is a trip, and the right way to think about it is as a short holiday built around one morning of American football.

A premium NFL Tokyo package would normally bring four things together:

• The game: hospitality seating with dining and a lounge, rather than a bare ticket, so a long journey ends somewhere comfortable.
• The travel: long-haul flights arranged around the game date, with transfers from the airport to the city and to the stadium.
• The stay: several nights in central Tokyo, so the game sits in the middle of the trip rather than at the end of a tiring flight.
• The experiences: the parts of Tokyo that make the journey worth it, from food tours to a night in Shibuya, planned around the group.

Shibuya scramble crossing in the evening, Tokyo, 09/10/2018. Photo: Benh LIEU SONG, CC BY-SA 2.0

Who a Tokyo trip suits

For a company, a Tokyo NFL trip is a reward rather than a networking afternoon. It suits incentive groups, top-performing sales teams and long-standing clients who have already done London. It also suits private groups of serious fans for whom the first regular-season game in Asia is a once-in-a-lifetime ticket. Because the flight is long and the time difference is real, most groups will want to arrive a couple of days early, settle in, and treat the game as the centrepiece of the week.

Why planning starts before the announcement

The honest truth about big international firsts is that the groups who get the trip they want are the ones who decided early. The NFL published its 2026 schedule on 13 May 2026, and the international games were known before the season began. If Tokyo is on the 2027 list, it is likely to be revealed in the same window. Registering interest now means we can come straight back to you with options the moment a date and stadium are confirmed, rather than starting from scratch.

Tokyo Tower lit orange among the skyscrapers of Minato, Tokyo, 03/12/2025. Photo: David Kernan, CC BY 4.0

What happens next: the signals to watch

Between now and a Tokyo game, these are the moments that will change this page:

• Any league statement naming Tokyo for 2027. Goodell's next public comments are worth watching closely.
• The 2027 international list. The 2026 schedule came out on 13 May 2026, so spring 2027 is the obvious window.
• A stadium. The Tokyo Dome and the Japan National Stadium are the names to listen for.
• The teams. Watch the Rams first, because of their Japan marketing rights.
• Whether 2027 really reaches ten games. ESPN reported in October that a tenth game was under consideration, with Asia among the new regions.

If none of that lands for 2027, Goodell's own words still point to 2028. Either way, this page will be updated as each piece is confirmed.

NFL Tokyo game hospitality: register your interest

Prestige Corporate Events already arranges NFL hospitality for the league's international games, from London to Madrid and Munich. A Tokyo game would be the biggest trip of them all: the game, the flights, the hotel nights and the experiences, arranged as one package for your group. To register your interest in an NFL Tokyo trip, or to plan a European game this month, start with our NFL International Series page.

Photo credits: Dick Thomas Johnson (Tokyo Dome entrance), CC BY 2.0. Staff Sgt. Breanne Donnell, US National Guard (Allianz Arena pre-game ceremony), public domain. 江戸村のとくぞう (Tokyo Dome interior), CC BY-SA 4.0. Lukas (Tokyo Dome from the air at night), CC BY 2.0. Arne Müseler (Japan National Stadium), CC BY-SA 3.0 DE. Tony Hisgett (Dolphins against Jaguars, London), CC BY 2.0. Benh LIEU SONG (Shibuya crossing), CC BY-SA 2.0. David Kernan (Tokyo Tower at night), CC BY 4.0. All via Wikimedia Commons.