Ireland to host Steelers, 1st NFL reg.-season gm.​on February 7, 2025 at 3:31 pm

PITTSBURGH — The NFL announced the first-ever regular-season game in Ireland will be played in the upcoming 2025 season, and the Pittsburgh Steelers are the designated home team. Their opponent has not been announced.

“The Terrible Towels will certainly make the trip across the pond to Croke Park [in Dublin],” said Dan Rooney, the Steelers’ director of business development and strategy. “We can’t wait for them to experience this game in what we call our motherland for the Rooneys.”

The game will be played at Croke Park, the largest stadium in Ireland and home of the Gaelic Athletic Association.

“We are delighted to officially bring a regular season NFL game to Ireland as part of our 2025 International Games slate,” said Peter O’Reilly, the NFL’s executive vice president of international, league events and club business. “Both the NFL and the Steelers franchise have deep roots and history in Ireland, and we’re looking forward to making our regular-season debut in Dublin, bringing our game to a large and passionate Irish fan base and underlining the NFL’s commitment to global growth.”

Not only did the Rooney family emigrate from Ireland to Pittsburgh, but former team president Dan M. Rooney served as the U.S. ambassador to Ireland from 2009 to ’12 and was a co-founder of the Ireland Funds charity.

“The opportunity for the Pittsburgh Steelers to play in Ireland is truly special, not only because of the Rooney family history there, but also to play in front of the growing number of Steelers fans in Ireland,” Steelers president Art Rooney II said. “We are thrilled to be part of this historic event to represent Pittsburgh in a game that brings the NFL to the great sports fans in Ireland.”

Because of their deep ties to the island, the Steelers also played a preseason game in Ireland against the Chicago Bears in 1997.

Florida State and Georgia Tech opened the college football season in Ireland last year, and O’Reilly said college football’s success factored into the NFL’s decision to host a game at Croke Park.

“Seeing college football and the partnership that they have in Dublin over these recent years, that’s a good thing overall,” O’Reilly said. “We want to see all levels of football grow. It all contributes. We know and we’ve seen the passionate NFL fans in Ireland for a long time. Just another data point has been those games. When you see a Notre Dame-Navy game that takes over the city of Dublin and the passion there, that adds to the clear recognition of how special a game would be in Dublin, especially a Steelers game.”

The Steelers have played in one other international game, a 2013 loss to the Vikings at Wembley Stadium in London.