Eight years later, the Bears are going back to London.
The team will play against the Raiders in 2019 in England as part of the NFL’s international series, the league announced Monday.
The date and location will be announced later. The Bears will play either at Wembley Stadium, the site of their last overseas game, or the new Tottenham Hotspur stadium in north London.
The game won’t cost the Bears a contest at Soldier Field. The Raiders — who, after their lease in Oakland expired, don’t have a home city for the 2019 season — will be the home team.
As it does with all teams that play an international game, the NFL will offer the Bears their bye in the following week. Most teams accept the bye to give their players extra time to recover from international travel. The NFL won’t release its full schedule until April.
The game will mark outside linebacker Khalil Mack’s first-ever contest against his former team. The Raiders traded Mack to the Bears eight days before the start of the 2018 season. The Bears then signed Mack to a six-year, $141 million contract that made him the richest defensive player in NFL history.
The Bears last played in London in 2011, beating the Buccaneers 24-18 at Wembley Stadium. They played a preseason game in the same stadium in 1986, beating the Cowboys 17-6.
Monday, the NFL detailed its five scheduled international games for 2019. The Chiefs and Chargers will play in Mexico City’s Azteca Stadium, one year after the Chiefs-Rams game there was cancelled because of concerns about the playing surface.
The other three London games will pit the Panthers against the Buccaneers, the Bengals against the Rams and the Texans versus the Jaguars. Two of the four games will be played at Wembley Stadium and the other two at the Tottenham Hotspur stadium, which seats 62,062 fans for soccer matches.
The stadium’s opening has been delayed for months but its home club could play there as soon as March. The Daily Mail reported last month that the Raiders were considering playing all their home games at the new stadium in 2019 before moving to Las Vegas in 2020.
At the end of next season, all but one of the league’s 32 teams will have played a game in the United Kingdom.
