Colts-Commanders Open 2026 NFL London Slate at Tottenham — SkimNews
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- Indianapolis Colts face the Washington Commanders at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium on Sunday (2:30pm UK, Sky Sports), the first of three London matchups in October, followed by Eagles-Rams and Chiefs-Raiders.
- Sauce Gardner ended a 651-day wait for a US win when the Colts beat the Houston Texans 19-17 in Week 3; his last US victory came December 15, 2024 with the New York Jets, and his only post-trade win before that was over Atlanta in Berlin.
- The London game is part of a record nine international games this season following the NFL's debut in Melbourne and Rio de Janeiro, with Commissioner Roger Goodell publicly floating an ambition of 16 international games per season.
- Washington Commanders arrive off an upset of Super Bowl champion Seattle, with Marcus Mariota starting again at quarterback for the injured Jayden Daniels; Terry McLaurin is questionable with a hamstring issue and Stefon Diggs is also in the receiving corps.
- Austrian offensive tackle Bernhard Raimann attended his first NFL game at Wembley in 2013 as a teenage club-team spectator and returns to London this week as a player, calling it "extremely special."
- Jonathan Taylor comes in leading the league with 18 rushing touchdowns on 1,585 yards, while safety Cam Bynum flagged a real cost of overseas trips: disrupted bodywork routines, with his acupuncturist and massage therapists unable to travel with the team.
- Shane Steichen's Colts started 0-2 (losses to Baltimore and Kansas City) before the Week 3 Texans win, and Gardner said going to 1-2 instead of 0-3 "can change the whole energy, everything."
Why it matters: The NFL is running a record nine international games in 2026 and Goodell has publicly stated an ambition of 16 per season — the Colts-Commanders opener is the first chance to test whether player buy-in matches league ambition, and Bynum's candid quotes about missing his acupuncturist and massage therapists are a rare on-the-record acknowledgment of the human cost of that expansion.
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