Kylie Minogue, the AFL and a Different Kind of Football
Kylie Minogue brought pop spectacle to Melbourne Cricket Ground for the 2026 AFL Grand Final (Saturday, September 26, 2026). If you caught her performance and wondered what the AFL has to do with American football, the answer is simple: they’re different games that share a name. One small correction for anyone expecting a Super Bowl style show: Kylie performed before kickoff, during the Grand Final’s pregame entertainment.
AFL stands for Australian Football League, the top competition for Australian rules football, often called “footy.” Like American football, it features an oval ball, tackling and teams trying to score at opposite ends of a field. Once play begins, though, the differences jump out. Australian football is played on a large oval with 18 players per side. Players move the ball by kicking or handballing it, and the action flows without the repeated downs and lineups familiar to NFL fans.
The two sports also grew along separate paths. Australian rules football took shape in Melbourne in the late 1850s, with its first written rules drawn up in 1859. That makes the MCG a fitting stage for both the Grand Final and Kylie’s homecoming performance: it sits close to where the Australian game began.
