Melbourne is about to get very busy. With Fremantle Dockers set to face the Brisbane Lions in the 2026 AFL Grand Final, Virgin Australia, Qantas and Jetstar have scrambled to add thousands of extra seats on routes into the city from Perth and Brisbane.
Virgin, the AFL's official airline, has rolled out nearly 4,000 additional seats between Perth and Melbourne and over 1,000 more on the Brisbane route. Across the week leading up to the big game, it will operate more than 110,000 seats on direct flights to and from Melbourne.
Qantas and Jetstar aren't far behind. The Qantas Group has put on seven extra Brisbane-Melbourne flights plus one from Sydney, adding roughly 1,160 seats for grand final weekend. One-way fares on those services start from $234 with Jetstar and $375 with Qantas. For Western Australian fans, Qantas has added another 13 Perth-Melbourne flights on top of 8,000 seats already added with Jetstar, bringing a further 2,300 seats into the market — with one-way fares from $766.
The extra services run across several days. From Brisbane, Virgin's additions start on Wednesday 23 September with departures at 4:15pm and 9pm, continuing through Thursday and Friday, plus a return leg to Brisbane on Sunday 27 September. Perth gets the biggest boost: extra Virgin flights from Wednesday 23 September through Saturday 26 September, with a heavy schedule of returns to Perth on the Sunday and Monday after the match. Qantas and Jetstar's Brisbane flights operate on Friday 25 September, with returns on the Sunday, and there's also a Friday morning Jetstar service from Sydney for Lions fans based there.
If you're chasing a seat, move fast. Demand spikes the moment a preliminary final result lands, and the cheapest fares on these extra services tend to disappear within hours. Jetstar's $234 starter fare is the budget option; anyone wanting flexibility or a better time slot should expect to pay more, particularly on the Perth route where fares start at $766 one way.
Even if you're not flying to the footy, this is a useful heads-up: Melbourne over grand final weekend is crowded and expensive, so travellers with no interest in the game might want to shift their dates. On the flip side, the city's grand final atmosphere — the parade, live sites, packed pubs — is a genuine spectacle in its own right, and a Friday match eve in Melbourne is a fun cultural experience even for neutral visitors.
For footy fans who missed the first wave of bookings, keep an eye on both Virgin and the Qantas Group schedules, as further capacity sometimes appears once flights fill. And book the return leg carefully — Sunday and Monday flights home are the ones that sell out first.
