The New Orleans Saints hope to play a regular season game in Paris sometime in the next two years, but nothing has been finalized with the team or the NFL, Saints owner Gayle Benson said Friday.
Negotiations between NFL and French officials are on-going, with the league considering multiple cities for its 2026 International Series.
Saints president Dennis Lauscha said Tuesday the team was cautiously optimistic about securing a game in Paris as early as the 2026 season, but Benson said Friday those comments were premature.
“I’m very, very excited about the possibility of playing a game in Paris in ’26 or ’27, but we don’t know for sure,” Benson said. “The NFL has not given us the go ahead. We've got to be careful that we don't get ahead of ourselves."
The NFL hopes to announce its international schedule for the 2026 season in the weeks ahead. The league has already announced its intent to play a first-ever game in Australia (Melbourne) next year. Other possibilities include London, Madrid, Rio de Janeiro and Berling and Munich, Germany.
The series included seven games in the 2025 season and is expected to add one or two more for 2026.
The NFL has never held a game in Paris, but league officials have expressed interest in playing a game in the French capital in recent years. The site would be Stade de France, which recently hosted the 2024 Summer Olympics.
A regular season game would culminate years of efforts by the Saints to grow the club’s brand in France.
In 2023, the Saints were granted the international marketing rights in France — the first NFL club to select and be awarded the French market — as part of the league’s global markets program.
Benson and linebacker DeMario Davis led a Saints contingent that visited Paris in July to market and promote the team.
Earlier this year, the Saints announced a strategic partnership with the Paris Musketeers, who play in the European League of Football, through which the team hopes to grow the American game while also increasing its own brand visibility in France.
“The NFL and myself, we're all working together to make this happen,” Benson said. “Roger (Goodell) would love to see us play there. But he told me, ‘I don’t when. I can't tell you if it's ‘26 or ’27 or ‘28.’ We just don’t know right now. Nothing has been decided yet.”