Vikings will play Aaron Rodgers, Jets in London on Oct. 6

The Vikings will open the 2024 season against the team that knocked them out of the playoffs two years ago. Their next three games will be against teams that won a playoff game last year, wrapping up with a trip to Lambeau Field to face Jordan Love.

Then the Vikings will cross the Atlantic Ocean for a game against Love’s Packers predecessor.

The Vikings’ trip to London, their fourth in 11 years, will come on Oct. 6 against a familiar nemesis. Aaron Rodgers, who’s faced Minnesota more than any team in his career, will play his 30th regular season game against the Vikings at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium.

For the second time since the NFL started playing regular season games in London, the Vikings will move a home game to the U.K. They were scheduled to face the Jets at U.S. Bank Stadium this season, giving Vikings fans perhaps one final chance to root for their team against Rodgers. Instead, the fans with a chance to hurl invective at the four-time NFL MVP will be the ones who traveled overseas to do so.

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The last time Rodgers was in the news for playing a football game was in Week 1 of the 2023 season, when he tore his left Achilles tendon only four plays into his time with the Jets after an offseason trade from the Packers. It will be the second time he’s played in London, after a Packers loss to the Giants in 2022 that came a week after the Vikings’ win over the Saints made them the first team to win in all three U.K. NFL venues (Wembley Stadium in 2013, Twickenham Stadium in 2017 and Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in 2022).

The London game highlights a Vikings schedule that will require the team to cover more than 22,000 air miles, nearly 9,000 more than it traveled in 2023. Eighteen days after their game in Tottenham, the Vikings will play a Thursday night game eight time zones west of London, traveling to the West Coast for Kevin O’Connell’s first matchup against his former employer (the Rams) and his old boss (Sean McVay).

They finish the regular season with a bounty of December home games: a stretch of three in a row that concludes with Kirk Cousins’ return to U.S. Bank Stadium on Dec. 8, and a Dec. 29 matchup against the Packers that precedes a regular-season finale in Detroit for the second straight year.

Though the Vikings will spend plenty of time in the air, they won’t be asked to stay up late nearly as much as they did last year. After playing five night games a year ago, they have just two on their 2024 schedule: the Rams game on Oct. 24 and a Monday night home game against Chicago on Dec. 16.

The Vikings have seven games against teams that reached the playoffs a year ago: four against Detroit and Green Bay, as well as matchups against the 49ers (Sept. 15), Texans (Sept. 22) and the Rams. Minnesota’s opponents posted a collective 145-144 record a year ago, tying the Vikings for the 16th-toughest schedule in the NFL as measured by prior year win percentage.

The Vikings also announced their preseason schedule on Wednesday. They will host the Raiders on Saturday, Aug. 10 at 3:05 p.m., then travel to Cleveland for a 3:25 p.m. game on Aug. 17 and wrap up the preseason on Aug. 24 at Philadelphia at noon.