Northwestern will open the new $862 million Ryan Field on Oct. 2 against Penn State, the athletic department announced Tuesday.
The Friday night game will be played 100 years to the day of the first football game at the original stadium, then known as Northwestern Stadium. It will be the first of five games in the 2026 season at the new stadium, followed by Ball State on Oct. 10, Rutgers on Oct. 24, Iowa on Nov. 7 and Illinois on Nov. 28.
Northwestern’s first two home games against South Dakota State on Sept. 5 and Colorado on Sept. 19 will be played at Martin Stadium on the lakefront. The Wildcats played the last two seasons at the temporary football stadium, along with games at Wrigley Field.
Northwestern said construction on Ryan Field will be finished in mid-September. The privately funded stadium will have 35,000 seats — 12,000 fewer than the old stadium — but NU has touted a better fan experience, with chair-back seats that are closer to the field with better sight lines.
The stadium was funded by insurance billionaire Patrick Ryan, founder and retired CEO of Aon Corp. and a Northwestern alumnus. The Ryan family donated $480 million in 2021 — the largest gift in university history — to help build the stadium and has committed additional funding as the cost of the project has risen.
Ryan’s son, Pat Ryan Jr., 58, a technology entrepreneur who holds law and MBA degrees from Northwestern, has led the stadium development through a lengthy approval process that included calls to halt the ambitious project in the wake of a hazing scandal and the July 2023 firing of football coach Pat Fitzgerald.
The project also has faced delays in the construction process, exacerbated by harsh winter weather that prompted developers to recently double the construction workforce to get the stadium ready for the 2026 season as planned.
“We’re somewhere in the neighborhood of five to six weeks behind from weather delays,” Pat Ryan Jr. told the Tribune on Tuesday. “We’ve been able to come up with a plan, primarily by adding more crews to our regular hours, a plan that allows us to deliver the stadium on time.”
Ryan said a mid-September opening had been targeted since demolition began in February 2024 — months later than originally planned due to the protracted approval process. The stadium won final approval from the Evanston City Council in November 2023.
As developers raced to get the stadium built in time for the 2026 season, Northwestern and Ryan did not give a specific opening date but held out hope it could get completed earlier than projected to be ready for the first home game.
Instead, the difficult weather conditions, including snow and extreme cold, pushed construction back even further, putting the entire season in jeopardy, Ryan said.
Ryan recently added a second construction crew, doubling to about 600 to 700 workers who will finish multiple levels simultaneously and speeding up the process to make up for the weeks lost to bad weather.
The “choreographed work” will take place mostly during the day, with some evening hours as necessary, allowing the developers to deliver the stadium by mid-September. After some dry runs, the new stadium should be ready to open for the Penn State game as planned, Ryan said.
The projected cost has risen from an initial $800 million to $862 million because of inflation and a few added features during development. Ryan said he had to value engineer about $60 million out of the total costs to get down to the $862 million total.
The extra crews and accelerated construction schedule will increase the costs by another 1% to 2%, or as much as $18 million more than the $862 million price tag. The Ryan family will pick up that cost.
“In the world of stadiums, people typically measure how much you’re over in the hundreds of millions or billions, so 1% or 2% we feel like is a victory, especially in the most inflationary environment in our lifetimes,” Ryan said.
The venue also is expected to host concerts, and the Chicago Stars NWSL team — which will play its home games at Martin Stadium this year — has applied for a permit from Evanston to play at Ryan Field beginning in 2027.
The athletic department announced that season ticket holders from 2023-25 will have priority access to seat selection at the new stadium. Tickets for the games at Martin Stadium will be sold separately from the Ryan Field season ticket package.
