Home openers get all the hype, but for fans willing to hit the road, some 2026 away games are a far better deal, and a far better weekend, than others.
The Action Network built a Travel Index for every qualifying away game on the 2026/27 NFL schedule, weighing 11 factors including ticket price, hotel costs, flight and drive time, weather, local attractions, and matchup quality, to find which road trips are actually worth booking. International games were excluded.
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Best overall trip
The best away trip in the league belongs to Giants fans heading to Philadelphia. New York's November 8 visit to Lincoln Financial Field tops our Travel Index at 83.8 out of 100, the highest of any of the 239 games we scored. It's a two-hour drive with no flight required, tickets average $560.53, and the Eagles-Giants rivalry gives the game itself real stakes.
Best trip if you have to fly
Seahawks fans get the best trip that requires a flight. Seattle's November 29 visit to Levi's Stadium to face San Francisco ranks second overall at a 76.1 Travel Index, with a direct flight, average ticket price of $474.96, and one of the highest rivalry scores in the dataset.
Cheapest trips in the league
If price is the only thing that matters, Cardinals fans have the two cheapest trips in the league, both to SoFi Stadium. Arizona's September 13 visit to the Chargers tops our Cost Index, with a $193.73 average ticket, a $121.38 hotel rate, and a travel cost of just $86.37 for the direct flight. Their October 18 trip to face the Rams at the same building ranks third for cost and sixth overall on the full Travel Index.
Most expensive trip
The most expensive trip on the board is a long one. Bills fans flying to Miami for a January 3 finale against the Dolphins face a $503.79 average ticket, a $322.37 hotel rate, and $611.99 in travel costs for the 1,187-mile flight, the lowest Cost Index score of any game we measured.
Best rivalry game
For pure rivalry, nothing beats Commanders-Cowboys. Washington's September 20 trip to AT&T Stadium carries a perfect 100 rivalry score, the highest of any matchup in the dataset. Its overall Travel Index still lands at a more modest 59.2, ranking 109th of 239 games.
Best weather
Weather-wise, Arizona is the place to be. Four of the five highest weather scores in the entire dataset belong to road trips into State Farm Stadium, including a perfect 100 for the Broncos' October 25 visit.
Methodology
We built a composite Travel Index for every 2026 NFL regular-season away game, covering how favorable each road trip is for a traveling fan rather than how good the matchup is. Games with TBD dates (flex scheduling) and games played in Europe were excluded due to missing ticket and date data.
Eleven factors went into the score: ticket price (Ticketmaster), accommodation price (Booking.com, 2 people, 1 night), flight cost (Skyscanner, 1-way economy), driving cost (OSRM distance at 25 mpg and $4.07/gallon), total travel time and distance (OSRM, with flight time calculated via haversine distance at 500 mph plus a 5-hour airport buffer), stadium accessibility from the airport and city center, local attractions/food/nightlife near the venue (Overpass API/OpenStreetMap), 10 years of historical weather for the game date (Open-Meteo), rivalry intensity (parsed from Wikipedia's list of NFL rivalries using Claude Opus 4.8), a team power rating (built from 2025 NFL.com stats including points scored, yards per play, third-down percentage, sacks, and turnover margin), and whether the game falls on a weekend.
Each metric was rescaled to a 0-100 scale across all 239 qualifying games. For six cost and hassle metrics (ticket price, hotel price, travel cost, travel time, distance, and airport/city distance), the scale was flipped so a cheaper or shorter trip scores higher. The Game Index is the average of all 11 rescaled metrics, with a higher score meaning a more favorable overall travel experience. A separate Cost Index is also provided for fans who want to rank games purely by affordability.
You can find the full sorted data here.
