2025 NFL draft location: Where it's going after Detroit
Three months after the Lions came within one game of making the first Super Bowl in franchise history, the collective eyes of the professional football world are once again on Detroit.
Detroit is playing host to the 2024 NFL draft, with 257 picks being made in a production area stretching from Campus Martius Park to Hart Plaza in downtown.
Though the draft has always been a source of interest in the NFL during the league’s offseason, it has mushroomed in popularity over the past two decades and turned into perhaps the sport’s marquee event outside of the Super Bowl.
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With that intensified demand for all things related to the draft, the event has evolved over time. As recently as the late 1960s, team representatives gathered in a small room while the NFL commissioner wrote draft selections on a chalkboard. As it generated more attention, it moved to ballrooms and later theaters, where crowds could gather to watch the action unfold.
Now, it’s a full-fledged spectacle, one that overtakes cities and, for nearly a decade now, takes its show on the road, with Detroit serving as its most recent stop.
Beyond this year, though, where will the draft take place? Here’s everything you need to know about future NFL draft sites, how host cities are determined and more:
Where will 2025 NFL draft be held?
After things wrap up this week in Detroit, the NFL draft will take place in 2025 in another NFC North city: Green Bay, Wisconsin.
The 2025 NFL draft will take place inside and around Lambeau Field, the famed home stadium of the NFL’s Green Bay Packers, from April 24-26. Green Bay was awarded the draft in November 2023. Prior to the announcement, Green Bay had pursued the possibility of hosting the draft for seven years.
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Green Bay, however, is the only future draft host site that has been determined, meaning that every draft from 2026 on has yet to be assigned to a particular location. That uncertainty isn’t unusual. The draft host is only named so far ahead of time, as Green Bay was selected only 17 months before the 2025 draft and Detroit was picked 25 months ahead of the 2024 draft.
How does the NFL decide where the draft will be?
The idea of the NFL Draft becoming a touring event would have been unimaginable as recently as 15 years ago. From 1965-2014, it was held every year in New York City, but in 2015, Chicago hosted it. Since then, it has been held in six different cities, with Detroit set to become the seventh this week.
The process behind selecting a draft location is similar to what goes into picking a Super Bowl host, with various cities submitting bids, which are reviewed and ultimately voted on by the NFL’s 32 owners.
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NFL draft sites
Since moving away from New York after the 2014 iteration of the event, here is where the draft has been held and where it will be held in the years to come:
2015: Chicago
2016: Chicago
2017: Philadelphia
2018: Arlington, Texas
2019: Nashville, Tennessee
2020: Virtual, due to the COVID-19 pandemic
2021: Cleveland
2022: Las Vegas
2023: Kansas City, Missouri
2024: Detroit
2025: Green Bay, Wisconsin
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Where is 2025 NFL draft location? Where it's going after Detroit
