As the NFL combine winds down, all eyes shift to Pittsburgh for the league's next showcase event

Ray Fittipaldo, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on Feb 28, 2026

Published in Football

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INDIANAPOLIS — The city of Indianapolis is playing host to its 39th consecutive NFL combine, an event that has grown from an under-the-radar offseason gathering of NFL teams to a televised spectacle that is a must-watch for armchair GMs who want to look into the future of their favorite team.

An even bigger, brighter spotlight will shine on Pittsburgh in 53 days, and there was some buzz at the combine about the 2026 NFL draft being staged in the Steel City for the first time in nearly 80 years.

The draft will take place April 23-25 on the North Shore. The only other NFL draft held in the city was in December of 1947, when it was held — with little fanfare — at the old Fort Pitt Hotel.

Next month, hundreds of thousands of fans will descend upon the city for the league’s second-most popular event behind only the Super Bowl.

“We’ve been talking about this for a long time,” Steelers general manager Omar Khan said here this week. “Pittsburgh is such a special place. It’s unique. It’s going to be great. I’m getting a ton of requests about passes and what’s going on, what to do. I’m just excited to show off the city.”

Like the combine, the draft used to be a much smaller affair. From 1965-2014, it was held on an annual basis in New York. Now it’s staged in a different NFL city each year.

Pittsburgh is the ninth city to play host to the draft in the past decade. It was held in Chicago in 2015 and 2016 followed by Philadelphia, Dallas, Nashville, Cleveland, Las Vegas, Kansas City, Detroit and Green Bay.

The NFL mostly rotates the Super Bowl among the same handful of warm-weather destinations. Hosting the draft is the next best thing for Northern cities such as Pittsburgh.

“It’s a great event,” Green Bay general manager Brian Gutekunst said. “We had a great turnout. The weather was good enough for us in Green Bay. In my 20-some years in the league, to see what the draft has turned into … It was always at Radio Music City Hall and never left, and now being able to move it from town to town — and each place doing such a great job with it — is pretty neat.”

The estimated attendance for last year’s NFL draft in Green Bay was 600,000. That was tied with Nashville for the second-highest attendance for a draft. Detroit holds the record with 775,000 in 2024.

For Green Bay, Wis., the total economic impact was nearly $73 million, according to Experience Greater Green Bay. That was $50 million more than their original projection of $20 million.

As for Detroit the year prior, Lions general manager Brad Holmes said hosting the NFL Draft helped to showcase what the new-look Motor City is all about.

“It was amazing,” Holmes said. “Detroit is such a football town. I’m probably biased, but I just know what it did for our city. It put our city on the map. The small businesses that were involved in it, it was big for them. I would expect Pittsburgh can expect the same.”

Holmes added: “My dad played for the Pittsburgh Steelers, so I’ve always followed them from afar and know about that franchise. I know they’re a football town, as well. They should be excited.”

Visit Pittsburgh estimates that between 500,000 and 700,000 will attend this year’s draft on the North Shore.

Green Bay staged the draft outside of Lambeau Field, the NFL’s oldest stadium and one of its most iconic.

“To see it unfold, the moments for the players and for our city in general, it was really cool,” Gutekunst said. “I think we were the first team that had it on site. We could look out the window and see it all. It lived up to everything and beyond what I expected.”

The Steelers are staging the draft along the Allegheny River, with the NFL draft Experience at Point State Park and the other festivities on the North Shore outside Acrisure Stadium. The Steelers will have representatives from their organization on the North Shore throughout the weekend, but Khan and the front office will execute the draft from the UPMC Rooney Sports Complex on the South Side.

One hundred employees from the NFL are coming to Pittsburgh this week for a final run-through with their respective departments.

“It’s a big undertaking,” Steelers team president Art Rooney II said in Indianapolis. “I don’t know if I would say it’s larger [in scope] than I thought, because we’ve seen what these other cities have been going through. It’s bigger for the city than any long-term effect for the franchise.”

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Staff writer Gerry Dulac contributed to this report.