The Chicago Bears Board of Directors voted to advance their plan to develop a stadium in Hammond, Indiana, on Thursday, pushing the franchise closer to leaving the state it's called home for more than 100 years.
"Yesterday, the Chicago Bears Board of Directors met and voted to advance our stadium development project in Hammond, Indiana, with the exact site to be selected," says a statement from chairman George McCaskey and team president and CEO Kevin Warren. "We believe a world-class stadium project in Hammond will transform the region, connecting Northwest Indiana to the South Side of Chicago through the Loop and across neighborhoods and suburbs stretching north of the city. It will bring Chicagoland together and deliver new opportunities to its residents and businesses."
This is the first time in the Bears' history that the team's board of directors has voted on a stadium site. "There is more work to do, but barring anything very strange, it's a done deal," one source told ESPN's Adam Schefter.
Meanwhile, a league source told ESPN's Courtney Cronin that Indiana is "in the lead," but "Illinois can still get back in the race."
Hammond is roughly 25 miles from the Bears' current home, Soldier Field, and sits just next to the Indiana/Illinois border. A departure from the state itself and a move to a state that already has an NFL team, the Indianapolis Colts, is a development that's somehow stunning yet surprising.
Ahead of the 2025 season opener, Warren wrote a letter to fans saying the team intended to leave Soldier Field -- the oldest NFL stadium still in use -- for Arlington Heights, Illinois, a suburb northwest of the city. The franchise had agreed to buy the 326-acre Arlington International Racecourse property for $197 million in 2021 and finalized the purchase in 2023.
However, a few months after Warren's September letter, he struck a very different tone.
"Stable timelines are critical, as are predictable processes and elected leaders, who share a sense of urgency and appreciation for public partnership that projects with this level of impact require," Warren wrote in December. "We have not received that sense of urgency or appreciation to date. We have been told directly by State leadership, our project will not be a priority in 2026, despite the benefits it will bring to Illinois."
Warren had, in part, wanted a strong commitment from Arlington Heights so the Bears could put in a bid to host the 2031 Super Bowl in their would-be-new, domed stadium.
Warren also introduced the Northwest Indiana idea in his December letter.
Then, earlier this week, the Illinois Senate passed a last-minute bill aimed at keeping the Bears in the state, but the Illinois House of Representatives adjourned without voting on the measure, per CBS News. State senator Bill Cunningham had introduced a bill allowing cities in Cook County with more than 70,000 people -- including Arlington Heights and Chicago -- to set up their own stadium authorities, just like the Northwest Indiana stadium authority. The bill gave the Bears the opportunity to pay for the stadium itself, but then lease it from the city, which would allow the team to avoid property taxes.
The Bears have long said that property tax certainty is crucial to their next move.
The Bears' lease at Soldier Field runs through 2033, but the team can buy its way out of the lease, according to the Chicago Tribune. The franchise's inaugural season -- as the Decatur Staleys -- was in 1920. They have played at Soldier Field since 1971.
