The 2025 season may not end up being the Buffalo Bills‘ last at Highmark Stadium after all.
A WGRZ report indicates their new Highmark Stadium will not be finished until December, but the Bills are still plowing ahead as though they will be able to play at their state-of-the-art stadium in time for the start of the 2026 NFL season.
Barring any catastrophic construction setbacks, the team reportedly will be able to collect its certificate of occupancy by June 2026, even though construction is expected to be still on going through the winter.
“We have no choice but to be open in July.” Bills chief operating officer Peter Guelli told reporters in May. “We have no choice to make sure this building is ready for the football team and for our fans.”
However, construction can be unpredictable, and the timeline for the new stadium remains up in the air.
Done, But Not Completed
The Bills reportedly expect their stadium to be about 90 percent complete when they receive their certificate of occupancy and start practice there in summer 2026.
“That’ll be [when] the building is substantially complete and ready to occupy,” Bills vice president of stadium operations John Polka said to WGRZ. “So we will have work still continuing to go on — things to be finished up. But that’s the day when we anticipate the building’s ready to be occupied by by our staff, to start getting ready for games and events.”
But just because construction vehicles will no longer be on site, and it will be safe for employees and players to begin working there, doesn’t mean the stadium’s many bells and whistles will be working as expected.
“We will still have work going on that needs to be finished, up in areas, completed. Punch list items,” Polka said, “punch list items, which means, like the paint doesn’t look right, or the wall wasn’t finished right, those areas will all still be completed as part of that.”
Still, even though those items will still need to be completed, Polka insists most fans will attend games at the stadium as it was rendered during drawings, even in spite of the reported Dec. 1 completion date.
“Certainly by the first [Bills regular-season] game, fans are going to see the building as it was intended,” Polka said.
Where Is The Bills New Stadium?
Bills owners Terry and Kim Pegula were gifted nearly $1 billion from the State of New York and Erie County for a new stadium across the parking lot from Highmark Stadium in the Buffalo suburb of Orchard Park, New York in the spring of 2022.
The stadium, which will be owned by the State of New York, was controversial due to the fact it was the largest stadium subsidy in the history of North American sports.
Still, the Bills’ tenure in Western New York had been in flux for years due to Highmark Stadium’s age — it opened in 1973, making it the fourth-oldest NFL stadium. But the new stadium, and Terry Pegula signing a 30-year lease, cements Buffalo as an ongoing NFL market for at least the next 30 years.
Despite the fact Bills Mafia has been filling Highmark Stadium in the Josh Allen era, their new stadium is slated to be about 10,000 seats smaller, clocking in at about 62,000 seats.
That means if you’re a Bills fan that won’t be a season-ticket holder across the street, you’d be wise to get out and see the team in 2025 — just in case it is the last year at the historic old stadium.
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