If reports from Thursday morning are true, Western Michigan football is set to say hallo und guten morgen to Frankfort, Germany in the 2026 season.
Per On3 Sports’ Brett McMurphy, the Michigan Wolverines have reportedly opted to move their 2026 opener from The Big House in Ann Arbor to Frankfort’s Deutsche Bank Park, a stadium which has hosted five sanctioned NFL games in its past.
The primary home of Bundesliga side Eintracht Frankfort since 1925, the Walstadion has also played host to NFL Europe
games as the on-again-off-again home to the Frankfort Galaxy (1991-2007) and has recently hosted two NFL regular season games in the past two years.
The game is set to be Michigan’s first international regular-season contest in its storied 145-year history, and they will become the sixth Big Ten program to travel overseas for a contest. Western Michigan has played an international game twice in program history— both times in the postseason (2007 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada; 2015 in Nassau, Bahamas.
The change in venue also comes with a reported change of date, as the contest moves one week backwards from Saturday, September 5th, 2026 to Saturday, August 29, 2026.
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