The 49ers ended up with not one but two international games in 2026 \u2014 one in Australia and one in Mexico. Even though the trip to Melbourne will be much longer than the trip to Mexico City, the Mexico trip will likely keep them away from home even longer than the season-opener down under.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe haven\u2019t finalized it yet, but we\u2019d love to stay here and go there,\u201d Shanahan said of the travel plans for the Week 11 game against the Vikings in Mexico City. \u201cIt\u2019s a shorter flight, but that\u2019s not really the issue. The main thing with Mexico City is it\u2019s 2,000 [feet] higher than Denver. And so, we like to get adjusted to that altitude. So, we\u2019ll probably go to Colorado Springs again like we did last time to get ready for that altitude and then probably go to Mexico City the night before.\u201d<\/p>\n
The 49ers play their Week 10 game at Dallas. Shanahan was asked whether the team would go straight to Colorado from Texas.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe haven\u2019t decided that yet, but most likely,\u201d Shanahan said. \u201cWe\u2019ll probably end up, the Mexico City trip will probably be a longer one than the Australia one, just because of that.\u201d<\/p>\n
The two international trips impose a significant burden on the 49ers. And it potentially creates a competitive disadvantage. Those issues, however, have taken a back seat to the league\u2019s efforts to globalize the game.<\/p>\n
The NFL wants to secure the ability to play 16 international games per year, with the idea of having every team make one international trip per season. That would be the fairest way to handle it. If every team has to leave the country once, the disadvantage levels out.<\/p>\n
For now, with a maximum of 10 international games, it would be far more fair for no team to be expected to travel to another country for a game more than once per year. In the ultra-difficult NFC West, having the 49ers make two separate trips to play in another country won\u2019t make it an easier to successfully compete with the Seahawks and the Rams.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The 49ers ended up with not one but two international games in 2026 \u2014 one in Australia and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":671928,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[349,99],"class_list":["post-671927","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nfl","tag-nfl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/671927","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=671927"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/671927\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/671928"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=671927"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=671927"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=671927"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}