(Photo Credit: Daily Snark)
The NFL announced on Wednesday that Pittsburgh will host the 2026 NFL draft. This will be the first time the city has hosted the draft since the event moved out of New York in 2015.
Draft Location Announced
Steelers team president revealed that the draft will be staged outside Acrisure Stadium on the North Shore. He expects crowds to fill the area between the stadium and PNC Park.
“The roots of pro football are deep in our region, and so we plan to celebrate the history of football. The Dan Marinos, the Joe Montanas that came from our area,” Rooney said Wednesday.
Successful Bid and Announcement
The Steelers had submitted bids to host the draft in 2026 and 2027. NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell informed Rooney, Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, and state legislators of Pittsburgh’s successful bid during a phone call on Wednesday morning.
“We think it’ll be the largest visitor event in the history of Pittsburgh, hosting hundreds of thousands of people and really football fans from all over the country — certainly Steelers Nation from all over the country,” Rooney said. “We just look forward to hosting that, and it’ll be an exciting time.”
Planning and Weather Preparations
The Steelers started planning to host the event several years ago, Rooney said, but they finalized their proposal last year. Hosting an outdoor event in Pittsburgh, even in late April, can be challenging due to the city’s unpredictable and often rainy spring weather.
“You have to be ready for the weather,” he said. “Obviously if they could do it in Detroit and Green Bay, we can do it in Pittsburgh.”
Significance for the Steelers
Hosting the draft, Rooney said, is especially significant for an organization that prides itself on building its best teams through the draft.
“This year we celebrated the 50th anniversary of the greatest draft in [team] history, the 1974 Steelers draft, which produced five Hall of Famers,” Rooney said. “We have a great tradition with the draft in our organization and think that’s a great part of hosting it. We will be celebrating all things in terms of some of the great players that were raised in Pittsburgh and played their early parts of their careers in Pittsburgh and just celebrations of all the various roots and history of the game.”
Upcoming NFL Draft Host: Green Bay
Green Bay will host the 2025 NFL draft, and Detroit hosted the 2024 draft, drawing a record crowd of over 775,000 fans.
“I don’t think any of us envisioned that it would be as big as it is.” NFL commissioner Roger Goodell said of the growth of the traveling draft. “I think Detroit was incredible. The passion of the fans, their enthusiasm for the event, it was just extraordinary. … We were very successful in Radio City. It is the media market of the world, someone might dispute, but certainly we were in a really great position there, and it just turned out that the facility wasn’t available on a given year, and we said, ‘Now’s the time, let’s go.’ And I don’t think we’re looking back. I think we’re looking forward, including Pittsburgh.”
This report used information from ESPN.
