Lambeau Field

About Lambeau Field

No ground in professional football carries more weight than the plot at 1265 Lombardi Avenue in Green Bay, Wisconsin. Lambeau Field is the oldest continuously occupied stadium in the NFL, and arguably its most hallowed. With 81,441 seats, it’s the second-largest in the league and the spiritual home of a franchise that has been here since 1919.

What makes Lambeau unique is its context. Green Bay has a population of roughly 107,000, by far the smallest market in major North American professional sports. The Packers are the only community-owned, non-profit franchise in the United States, with over 360,000 shareholders ensuring the team can never be moved. Every home game has been sold out since 1960. The waiting list passed 155,000 names in early 2026. The stadium has no corporate naming rights and never will, it’s simply Lambeau Field, named after the man who started it all.

The stadium was built in 1957 at a cost of $960,000, designed by Green Bay firm Somerville, Inc. It has been massively expanded since, from 32,150 seats to 81,441 through a $295 million redevelopment finished in 2003 and a second program begun in 2011 that the club puts at $286.5 million. The playing surface is SISGrass, a hybrid of 95% natural grass reinforced with synthetic fibers. Beneath the turf lies 34 miles of radiant heating pipe fed by 12 boilers producing 48 million BTUs, keeping the “Frozen Tundra” playable even in the depths of a Wisconsin winter.

Lambeau has hosted the Ice Bowl (1967), the 2025 NFL Draft, a Manchester City vs. Bayern Munich friendly before 78,128 fans (2022), NFC Championship Games, and major concerts from Paul McCartney to Billy Joel. Luke Combs played two nights in May 2026 and set the stadium concert record on the second of them.

Getting to Lambeau Field

Public Transit

Green Bay is a small city with limited but functional transit. Green Bay Metro bus routes 9 and 12 serve stops near the stadium. On game days, Lamers Express offers shuttle service from multiple pickup locations around the area, the most reliable transit option for visitors without a car.

Driving + Parking

Driving is how the vast majority of fans reach Lambeau Field. GPS: “1265 Lombardi Avenue, Green Bay, WI 54304.”

The lots ringing the stadium are sold out to season parking pass holders, so plan on one of four routes instead. A limited number of individual passes for Lot 15 in Titletown go on sale online, digital only, with no tailgating permitted. Nearby lots run by PMI take reservations for single games. Private owners along the approach streets sell spaces for cash at whatever the day will bear. And many of the residential streets within walking distance are free. Accessible parking is $50 in Lots 4 and 7, first come, first served. The club’s own lots are cashless, as is everything else it runs.

Tailgating is permitted in all stadium lots except Titletown. Setup must stay within a 9x6 foot space behind your vehicle. Charcoal and propane grills are allowed; wood fires and turkey fryers are not.

Rideshare

Uber is the official rideshare partner. The designated pickup/drop-off zone is at the Bellin Health-Titletown lot behind Lodge Kohler. Green Bay’s small size keeps costs reasonable, $10-15 from the airport, $8-12 from downtown hotels. On game days, expect surge pricing after the final whistle.

From the Airport

Where to Sit, and What You Are Sitting On

Settle this before you buy a ticket: most of Lambeau Field is a bench.

Sections 100 to 138 and 300 to 354, most of the bowl, are bleacher seating with no backs. You get a seat number on a metal bench, and the company of whoever sits on either side of you. The Packers will rent you a seat back at the main gates for $10, and on a December afternoon that ten dollars is the difference between watching a game and enduring one. One exception is worth knowing: the south end built in the 2010s has real seats, its ticket sections end in the letter “s”, and those holders can walk straight past the rental line.

The bench is not an oversight. It is the building.

City Stadium opened with wooden bleachers and kept them for twelve seasons, so the Ice Bowl crowd watched Bart Starr’s sneak from planks. Aluminum arrived before the 1969 season, bolted onto the same brackets that had held the wood, and the changeover ran roughly $350,000, more than a third of what the whole stadium had cost to build twelve years earlier. Sit down today and you are sitting on a decision made in 1969.

The things nobody warns you about

Water. Two drinking fountains sit inside the Atrium, and the outdoor concourses have none at all. If you want tap water once you are in the bowl, the bar at the Verizon Loft on level 3 and the Bar and Grill at section 354 will give you some, and that is the whole list.

Cash. There is no such thing here anymore. Lambeau is cashless on game days and every other day, checks included. Free cash-to-card stations will load anything from $5 to $500 onto a card if you turn up with bills.

Beer. Alcohol is two per person per transaction, and sales stop at the end of the third quarter. Plan the fourth accordingly.

Arrival. Gates open two hours before kickoff, and bags have to be clear and no bigger than 12 by 6 by 12 inches.

Quiet. Section Yellow, at section 112, is a sober section that opens two hours before kickoff and runs to the final whistle. Barely advertised, and more useful than it sounds.

Who is actually selling you the bratwurst

Someone’s neighbor, usually. More than 90 schools, social service agencies and community groups staff the concession stands at every home game, raising an average of $140,000 per game for their own causes, keeping a share of what they sell and all of the tips. It is the most Green Bay thing about the building, and it is worth a little patience at halftime: the person working the till is a parent or a teacher on a fundraising shift, not a career cashier.

What to order: the Meat Packing Company, which exists only here, does giant bratwursts and cheese curds. Brew Pub Pizza is the official pizza of the Green Bay Packers, a sentence that tells you something about this franchise. The Miller Lite Endzone Market and Bar sits behind section 100 on the north side and holds nearly 400 people, which on a January afternoon is the most valuable real estate in Wisconsin.

Construction & Design

Lambeau was a first. When it opened on September 29, 1957, City Stadium was widely billed as the first built specifically for an NFL franchise, at a point when the rest of the league rented its ballparks from baseball clubs. A $960,000 bowl designed by the local firm Somerville, Inc., led by owner and architect John E. Somerville, with Richard Gustafson planning the sightlines after studying the stadium at his alma mater, Michigan, and built by Geo. M. Hougard and Sons. Vice President Richard Nixon sat in the crowd, as did NFL commissioner Bert Bell. For a franchise founded in 1919 in a town of barely 100,000, a permanent purpose-built home was a statement that the Packers were not going anywhere.

The bowl grew by filling itself in. It opened at about 32,000 seats, then climbed through a run of expansions: 38,669 in 1961, 42,327 in 1963, 50,852 in 1965, and 56,263 in 1970 once the end zones were fully enclosed. The shape you see now was set early. What came later was mostly stacked on top.

The modern stadium is really two big projects. The 2001-2003 redevelopment, a $295 million job by Ellerbe Becket with Turner Construction building it, wrapped the bowl in the five-story Atrium, added club seats and suites, and pushed capacity to 72,515 without ever disturbing the natural grass field. A decade later the 2013 south end zone expansion closed the last open end, adding roughly 7,000 theater-style seats with backs and a 70-by-220-foot scoreboard, the end zone work costing about $130 million, reaching today’s 81,441.

Then there is the field itself, the part the cold made famous. Under the grass runs a heating system of antifreeze-filled pipe, which replaced the original electric coils in 1997 and was torn out and rebuilt in 2007 alongside an entirely new drainage system, with grow lights wheeled out in late autumn to keep the turf alive through a Wisconsin winter. The surface is Kentucky bluegrass stitched through with synthetic fiber for grip, a hybrid that has been rebuilt twice since. It is an enormous amount of engineering aimed at one stubborn goal: keeping a grass field playable in a place where playing on grass should be impossible.

That stubbornness is the point. Seventy seasons in, it has never carried a corporate name. It is simply Lambeau Field, and it intends to stay that way.

History of Lambeau Field

The story begins with Earl “Curly” Lambeau, who co-founded the Green Bay Packers in 1919 at age 21 with $500 from his employer, the Indian Packing Company, the origin of the team’s name. He led the Packers to six NFL championships as player-coach before his death in 1965.

The Packers needed a new home by the mid-1950s. New City Stadium opened on September 29, 1957, with a 21-17 victory over the Bears before a capacity crowd of 32,150. After Lambeau’s death in 1965, the city council renamed it Lambeau Field in his honor.

On December 31, 1967, Lambeau hosted the most legendary game in NFL history. The Ice Bowl, the NFL Championship between the Packers and Dallas Cowboys, was played in -13°F temperatures with -48°F wind chills. The field’s heating coils failed, turning the surface to ice. Bart Starr’s quarterback sneak with 16 seconds left won it 21-17. NFL Films narrator John Facenda immortalized the phrase “the frozen tundra of Lambeau Field” and the nickname stuck forever.

Notable events:

• December 26, 1993: LeRoy Butler performs the first Lambeau Leap against the Raiders.
• 2001-2003 ($295M renovation): Added upper decks, the five-story Atrium, Hall of Fame, and 1919 Kitchen & Tap. Capacity grew to 72,515.
• 2011-2013 ($130M end zone projects): Closed the open south end, added roughly 7,000 seats and a 70x220 ft. HD scoreboard. Capacity reached 81,441.
• 2017: Titletown District opens, a 34-acre development with Lodge Kohler hotel, Hinterland Brewery, and a public park.
• July 2022: First-ever soccer match, Manchester City 1, Bayern Munich 0 before 78,128 fans.
• 2023 ($140.5M Atrium renovation): The club rebuilt the Atrium concourse, the final phase of the work begun in 2011 and, at $286.5 million across the whole program, all of it privately financed.
• April 2025: Lambeau hosts the NFL Draft for the first time.
• May 2026: Luke Combs plays two nights, the first time the stadium hosted back-to-back shows by the same artist in one weekend. Saturday drew 51,981, the largest crowd for a single artist in the stadium’s history, and the weekend totaled 92,540.

Lambeau Field is more than a stadium, it’s a civic institution. The smallest city in major professional sports has built one of its largest, loudest, and most beloved venues. The Frozen Tundra endures.

Sources & Further Reading

• Green Bay Packers, the club’s own record: Mark Murphy on capacity, the 2003 redevelopment, the 2011 end zones and the 2023 Atrium. Second in the league at 81,441 in the president’s own words; 32,150 at opening and 72,515 after 2003 against 60,890 before; $130 million for the end zones, $140.5 million for the Atrium, roughly 7,000 seats, and $286.5 million since 2011.
• Cliff Christl, Packers team historian: the 70th season and twelve years of wooden bleachers. The $960,000 bond issue of 1957, the $295 million 2001-03 job, and the 1969 aluminum swap at $350,000.
• Lambeau Field gameday guidance: packers.com. Bleacher sections, the $10 seat-back rental, the cashless rule, Section Yellow, bag sizes and tailgating.
• Somerville, Inc., the stadium’s original architect: somervilleinc.com. Owner John E. Somerville chose the sloping site; Richard Gustafson planned the sightlines.
• Elkus Manfredi Architects, Lambeau Field expansion and renovations: elkus-manfredi.com. The design team’s own account of the south end zone.
• Fox 11 on the field heating: fox11online.com. The club’s facilities director on the 34 miles of tubing, 5 more under the track, and the twelve boilers of which three serve the field.
• Spectrum News 1, reporting from behind the concession counter: spectrumnews1.com. The 90-plus community groups, the $140,000 a game, and what the volunteers keep.
• NBC 26 on the 2026 season: nbc26.com. The 155,000-name waiting list.