The Jacksonville Jaguars have been working with the architectural and construction team assembled to renovate EverBank Stadium to come up with a way to allow football games during the 2026 season at the stadium with a reduced seating capacity.
As reported by David Bauerlein of The Florida Times Union, the upper deck of the stadium would be closed for the renovation work. The stadium would not host any games the following season.
Team president Mark Lamping said one of the biggest takeaways from community huddles held in June was that fans want to limit as much as possible how much time the Jaguars would be unable to play in Jacksonville.
"This was one of the things we really focused on coming out of the community huddles last summer," Lamping said. "There is a desire among virtually all our fans that to the degree we can minimize the number of games away from Jacksonville without too many sacrifices, they certainly would prefer that."
Related: Jags Release Report on 'Stadium of the Future' Community Huddles
"We all want the Jaguars to play at home during construction if it’s possible to do so," city spokesperson Phillip Perry said. "We are still very early in the process and need to further explore how it will impact the overall construction budget and timeline."
The Jaguars unveiled their proposed design in June for a renovated stadium that would cost $14 billion and add a shade-delivering roof cover, greatly widened concourses, more elevators and escalators, digital lighting technology, and a shiny mirrored material wrapping the outside of the stadium. Lamping said reducing the impact from two seasons to one season for Jaguars games would make the project more complicated and "slightly more expensive" but still within the estimated cost of up to $1.4 billion.
Related: 11 Renderings: Jaguars Reveal 'Stadium of the Future' Plans
In a scenario where the Jaguars play at EverBank Stadium during the 2026 season, the stadium would have capacity for about 44,000 fans, compared to the Jaguars' average per-game home attendance 69,000 this season.
"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," Lamping said.
"That would likely, depending on their availability, be University of Florida or Camping World Stadium in Orlando because those are the two closest football-ready stadiums to Jacksonville," he said.
Lamping said the team also needs to be comfortable that the construction schedule would still be on track to meet the goal of having renovations finished in time to start playing games in the overhauled stadium in the 2028 season.
