The Jacksonville Jaguars are working on plans that would allow the team to play at EverBank Stadium, albeit with a limited capacity crowd, for the 2026 season while a massive renovation is underway, according to a report from the Florida Times-Union.
If that plan came to fruition, EverBank Stadium would have a capacity of about 44,000 fans for the 2026 season and the Jaguars would play elsewhere in 2027.
“We would need to get comfortable that our fans would prefer that the games be in Jacksonville with a reduced capacity than perhaps being someplace else where there is greater capacity,” Jaguars president Mark Lamping told the Times-Union.
Initially, the Jaguars said the proposed project would require the team to either play two years in another venue or spend four seasons playing in EverBank Stadium while it’s under construction. It wasn’t until October that Lamping raised the possibility of the team leaving its home stadium for only one year.
Where the Jaguars would play in 2027 if the deal gets done remains to be seen. Ben Hill Griffin Stadium in Gainesville, Hodges Stadium at University of North Florida, and Daytona Speedway have all reportedly had discussions of some sort with the Jaguars about eventually hosting games. Lamping also mentioned Camping World Stadium in Orlando as a possibility in his talk with the Times-Union.
In June 2023, Lamping said that the team was hoping a deal with the City of Jacksonville for the renovation project would get done in spring 2024. Mayor Donna Deegan has seemingly been on the same page, telling the Times-Union in October that she’d “like to get this done sooner rather than later” and “move on to other issues.”
The price tag for the entire project proposed by the Jaguars — which includes turning part of the parking lot into an entertainment district — has been projected to come out to about $2 billion. The team said in the summer that it planned to ask the City of Jacksonville to pick up half that bill.
