American football’s NFL has announced it will continue to stage regular-season international games in Brazil after it agreed a new five-year deal with the city of Rio de Janeiro centered on the iconic Maracanã Stadium.
Beginning in 2026, the league will stage three regular-season games in the country over five years, all of which will be at the 78,838-capacity Maracanã, in agreement with the iconic arena’s owners, the state government of Rio de Janeiro.
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The NFL claims 36 million fans in Brazil, while Rio de Janeiro state governor Claudio Castro said that the country is the "second-largest consumer of American football outside the United States," stating: “Bringing the NFL to Rio is a milestone that will boost tourism, create jobs, stimulate the economy, and show the strength of our state as an international sports destination.”
NFL commissioner Roger Goodell added: “Building on the success of the games in São Paulo, we could not be more excited to play in one of the world’s most iconic cities — Rio de Janeiro.
“We look forward to working closely with our city and state partners in Rio, along with the historic Maracanã Stadium, to deepen our ties to the tens of millions of fans in Brazil and across South America.”
The league has staged games in Sao Paulo in each of the 2024 and 2025 seasons, serving as season openers to the respective campaigns, and looked to be in negotiations with the city for an extension to the pair’s deal as recently as this year, though that now seems to have fallen through.
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By GlobalDataWhile Sao Paulo is the larger city, with a greater reputation as a regional business and events hub, Rio’s Maracanãis a larger and perhaps more world-renowned arena than Sao Paulo’s Neo Quimica Stadium.
The Maracanã venue is operated by a pair of the city’s biggest soccer sides, Flamengo and Fluminense, and in the past has hosted major events such as the FIFA World Cup final in 2014, and soccer at the Olympic Games events in 2016 (as well as the opening and closing ceremony of that year’s games).
In terms of international team marketing, four NFL franchises hold rights for the Brazil territory through the league’s global markets program: the Detroit Lions, Miami Dolphins, New England Patriots, and reigning Super Bowl champion Philadelphia Eagles.
Elsewhere, the NFL has also moved to bolster its position in the Spanish market with the appointment of Rafa de los Santos as its country manager for the territory.
De los Santos joins the league after three years at Amazon Web Services (AWS), the e-commerce giant’s major tech enterprise, where he had been the sports lead for Europe, the Middle East, and Asia.
De los Santos will manage the league’s international strategy for the country, which will host its first-ever NFL regular-season game on November 16, 2025.
Before his time at AWS, De los Santos boasts a strong history in the sports industry, serving as chief revenue officer of French side Girondins de Bordeav between 2019 and 2022 (back when the club was in the French top flight), and before that spent close to seven years as the new media director of Spanish soccer icons Real Madrid.
That relationship will be especially fruitful given that it is Real Madrid’s Santiago Bernabeu stadium that will host the 2025 NFL Spanish Game, and likely any games in the future, thanks to its retractable NFL turf.
