Baltimore Ravens and Dallas Cowboys are set to contest the first NFL regular-season game in Rio de Janeiro, with the Maracanã Stadium hosting a fixture that extends the league’s presence in Brazil beyond São Paulo.
The match forms part of the NFL’s record nine-game international programme for 2026 and places Rio among three new territories on this season’s schedule, alongside Paris and Melbourne. It is the league’s third successive season in Brazil after games in São Paulo in 2024 and 2025, but its first in Rio de Janeiro, home to the Maracanã.
The NFL has also announced a longer-term commitment to Rio, saying it will stage at least three regular-season games in the city across five years. That makes the Ravens-Cowboys meeting more than a one-off venue change: it is the opening test of a recurring event in a market where association football remains the dominant sport.
Maracanã game starts NFL’s Rio commitment
The NFL’s Brazilian debut came in September 2024, when the Green Bay Packers played the Philadelphia Eagles at Corinthians Arena in São Paulo. The league returned to the same stadium the following year, when the Los Angeles Chargers beat the Kansas City Chiefs.
Rio now provides a distinctly different setting for the next stage of that strategy. NFL Brazil general manager Luis Martinez told Sky Sports that São Paulo and Rio required different approaches, characterising São Paulo as more corporate and industrial while presenting Rio’s local culture and atmosphere as central to the new event.
Martinez said the league intended to make use of recognisable aspects of Rio in its activity around the game. The programme is due to include community events involving the Ravens and Cowboys, flag football activity, watch parties, influencer events and an NFL race featuring a 2km family walk and a 5km run.
He also said an under-15 female flag football event would be staged, while national youth tournaments in several age groups were part of the league’s wider Brazilian participation plans. Martinez presented young people and community engagement as important to establishing a longer-lasting connection with the NFL.
Those initiatives do not in themselves demonstrate sustained demand, but the five-year minimum commitment gives the league repeated opportunities to build familiarity in Rio rather than relying solely on the visibility of one regular-season fixture.
A new city in a wider international schedule
The Rio game sits within the NFL’s biggest international slate to date, with nine fixtures scheduled outside the United States in 2026. Paris and Melbourne are the other new territories named by Sky Sports, while the Melbourne Cricket Ground has already hosted San Francisco 49ers against Los Angeles Rams in front of 100,000 fans.
According to Sky Sports, the league will have played 71 regular-season games outside the US by the end of the 2026 season, counting from its first such game in Mexico City in October 2005. The Maracanã is therefore an addition to an established international programme, rather than the beginning of it.
For Rio, the competitive challenge is converting the attention around an NFL occasion into support for a sport competing in a football-led environment. Martinez acknowledged to Sky Sports that Brazil is dominated by association football, but argued that the country’s sporting appetite and existing NFL followers offered encouragement.
The choice of the Ravens and Cowboys supplies the immediate sporting focus. Dallas arrive after beating the Washington Commanders 37-20, a game in which Dak Prescott threw four touchdown passes to move past Tony Romo for the Cowboys’ all-time franchise record. Baltimore, meanwhile, come off a 24-17 defeat by the New Orleans Saints.
The game’s enduring significance will depend on what follows the Maracanã debut. The NFL has already committed to further Rio fixtures, while its local plans place emphasis on youth flag football and city-wide events. For now, Ravens versus Cowboys gives that longer project its first regular-season stage in Rio.