German City to Host First-Ever Regular-Season NFL Game in 2022

By Brian Jones

The NFL is heading to Germany. On Wednesday, the league announced that Munich will host the first-ever regular-season game in Germany during the 2022 season. Additionally, the NFL announced that future games will be played in the German city of Frankfurt. 

"We are very pleased to welcome Munich and Frankfurt to the NFL family and are excited to reward our fans in Germany for their passion by bringing them the spectacle of regular-season NFL football," NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said in a statement. "We look forward to staging our first game in Germany at FC Bayern Munich's fantastic stadium later this year and to exploring areas of broader collaboration with the Bundesliga."  

The game in Munich will be one of five international games for the NFL in 2022. There will be one game played in Mexico while three games are scheduled to take place in the United Kingdom. And of those three United Kingdon games, two will be played at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium while the other will be played at Wembley Stadium with the Jacksonville Jaguars being the home team. The matchups and dates for the international games won't be released until the 2022 NFL schedule announcement in the Spring. However, the homes teams for those games will be announced in the coming weeks. 

The NFL's plan is for Germany to host four International Series games over the next four seasons. For 2022, the game in Munich will be played at FC Bayern Munich Stadium, the home of the Bundesliga champions. The stadium will host another game in the future while the other two will be played at Frankfurt Stadium. 

"We are very pleased to welcome the NFL International Series to Munich," Lord Mayor of Munich Dieter Reiter said. "It is a great honor for the state capital Munich to be the first German city to stage a regular-season NFL game. Many Munich residents are big football fans and they will be thrilled that this spectacular sporting event is coming to their city."  

Munich, Frankfurt, and Düsseldorf were the three finalists among the nine cities in Germany. In December, the Carolina Panthers, Kansas City Chiefs New England Patriots and Tampa Bay Buccaneers were granted access to Germany for marketing, commercialization and fan engagement as part of the league's International Home Marketing Areas initiative. The NFL says that 19 million fans live in Germany.  

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