How to Actually Pull Off a Pilgrimage to an NFL International Game

If you’re lucky enough to have embarked on a sports pilgrimage or two in your lifetime, there’s always a damn, this was worth it moment. It’s the instant when you realize the money, the time, and the enduring of the TSA line justified your PTO. A few years ago, I bought a pair of random US Open tickets that turned into a Round of 32 match between the Williams sisters. At a post(ish)-pandemic Augusta in 2022, it was simply enjoying a $3 pulled-pork sandwich around a ton of people. And this is a little messed up, but when I went to last year’s college football championship, it was flying into a hurricane and hearing the Michigan fans belt their fight song when we landed.

But none of that compared with belting John Denver’s “Take Me Home, Country Roads” with a bunch of British folks at London’s famous Wembley Stadium. Last month, I caught the NFL’s week 7 international face-off between the Jacksonville Jaguars and the New England Patriots. I don’t think they even knew which team they were rooting for—I saw nearly all 32 NFL jerseys in the crowd, including that of my Pittsburgh Steelers—but damn, did they know “Country Roads.”

Why was I belting John Denver? The kind folks at Klarna, the AI-powered global payments network and shopping assistant, invited Esquire out to London to use its services (more on that later) to plan a trip to one of this year’s NFL International Games. If you somehow missed the thousand-some ads during the course of the football season so far, the NFL is, uh, out for world domination. The league hosted its first international tilt nearly 20 years ago in Mexico City, but commissioner Roger Goodell has ramped up his efforts in recent years to bring the pigskin abroad. This season saw three games in London, one in Brazil, and one in Munich. Goodell expects the NFL’s slate to expand to eight matchups abroad in 2025, venturing into Spain and maybe even Ireland.

As insane as it sounds to book an international flight for a football game, well … I highly recommend booking an international flight for a football game. There’s just a lot you need to know first—and a whole bunch of other things you should do outside the game itself.

First things first: I’m not sure if this goes without saying, but no decent human—I do not care how much you love football—should hop on a seven-plus-hour flight just to see if New England’s rookie quarterback, Drake Maye, has the goods to succeed Tom Brady. (Unless you’re traveling to see your squad. And they’re playing in the Super Bowl.) So the first step—once you’ve figured out which game you’re going to and where—is figuring out the kind of vacation you’d like to plan around the event itself and roll from there.

I had long wanted to visit London and Paris, so I built my itinerary so that I’d fly to London a week before the Jags-Pats matchup, then take a train from London to Paris a few days in and return in time for Sunday football. If you’re attending one of the London games, Amsterdam and Brussels are also doable trips via train. If there’s another NFL throw-down happening in Munich this year, consider a detour to Berlin.

The NFL opened its international slate this season in São Paulo, Brazil, showcasing the Eagles and Packers.

Where do you stay? Obviously, there’s no single right answer, but I split my time in London between Virgin Hotels London-Shoreditch and the Hoxton, Shepherd’s Bush. Both are great, relatively affordable choices, but the Hoxton is closer to Wembley and made for an easier ride over to the game. You can’t go wrong with either neighborhood—Shoreditch has loads of vintage shops and probably the best Thai food I’ve had in my life, while Shepherd’s Bush has an ungodly amount of pubs bursting at the seams with batshit Premiere League fans. Especially this place. (Esquire is also a fan of the Soho area.)

Now, this definitely goes without saying, but a trip like this—while entirely worth it, I swear—will put you back a few paychecks. Good thing they announce the worldwide slate with a lot of advance notice.

As for the game itself? Well, here’s my biggest regret of the entire jaunt: I didn’t wear a Steelers jersey. Considering there are many, many bars in London where you’re genuinely not welcome if you’re wearing the wrong team’s kit, I worried about donning anything other than Jaguars or Patriots gear. (You wouldn’t catch me dead in a Tom Brady jersey. I lived through the TB12 era of crushed postseason dreams.)

Machine Gun Kelly performed the halftime show at the Munich game.

I’m happy to report that the NFL International Games feel like more of a celebration of American football and less of a contest between fandoms. Every fan wears their favorite team’s swag—and you won’t find anything close to the rowdiness of a soccer atmosphere overseas. It’s almost like watching a soccer friendly at Metlife Stadium—everyone cares about what’s happening on the field, absolutely, but the maximum level of excitement hovers around enthusiastic approval. Or maybe that’s because I saw a scuffle between two of the worst squads in the NFL not named the Carolina Panthers. Sorry, Trevor Lawrence. You still have great hair.

Sitting inside Wembley Stadium was truly the experience of a lifetime, if you don’t mind me using a cliché. It’s worth it to get the nicest seat you can comfortably afford. (The venue even has a few extra inches between each seat compared with what you’d find at an American arena.) You should probably scope out a local bar to wait out the traffic exodus once the fourth quarter wraps—I nearly died trying to find my Uber in the postgame rush. Some pubs even subscribe to NFL RedZone and broadcast the afternoon lineup, so you can make a day of it.

Now, no one can truly put a price on a Troy Polamalu jersey, but the Klarna Search & Compare spec did help me find the cheapest price for one.

Once again, if you’re planning a week like this, you’re forking over quite a few stacks of cash in the name of the good ol’ gridiron. And Klarna helped me keep my embarrassing amount of purchases straight. As part of the voyage, Klarna asked me to try its app to pick up any last-minute goods for the trip—toiletries, a Troy Polamalu jersey, whatever. Here’s the most helpful part of it: Klarna’s Search & Compare feature effectively aggregates a colossal amount of retailers into one app, so you can search for whatever you want and find the lowest price for it. (Pro tip: Buy your Hokas on Klarna.) Once you’re done, you can track every shipment under one page.

You might not find me using Klarna for something like random toilet paper on Amazon—but it’s ridiculously useful if you’re making multiple purchases in a single burst. (Especially since you can earn up to 10 percent cash back on purchases in the app.) Think travel, holiday gifting, Black Friday, and Prime Day. But for a trip like this, you’ll find quite a few of the merchant partners useful: Ticketmaster, Uber, AirBnb, and Expedia. Klarna also has an interest-free pay-in-four option (split over the course of six weeks), if you need it.

Sound like something you want to add to your bucket list? Wait until the NFL announces its 2025 schedule until you decide where (or if) you want to make the pilgrimage. That reveal should happen in mid-May. I’ll certainly keep my eyes peeled—word on the street is that the Steelers would cross the pond if the NFL staged a game in Ireland.

As Esquire’s entertainment editor, Langmann edits coverage of film, television, sports, and video games. During his seven years at Esquire, he’s interviewed celebrities and athletes such as Matthew McConaughey, Terry Bradshaw, Steph Curry, Carrie-Anne Moss, Josh Brolin, and more. Langmann has also contributed several essays to the magazine, which range from the time he learned how to ride a bike as an adult, to the time he ingested a dangerous amount of caffeine in the name of journalism.  All of that said, Esquire readers might know him best from his chaotic time recapping Westworld. He’ll never forgive HBO for taking it away from him.