Levi’s Stadium appears Super Bowl-bound for 2026

SANTA CLARA — Levi’s Stadium is expected to make a Super Bowl encore in 2026.

Next week’s NFL owners meeting in Minneapolis should yield a vote that awards Super Bowl LX to the 49ers’ home field, according to Ben Fischer of the Sports Business Journal.

An announcement could come as soon as Monday or Tuesday, according to a team source.

That Super Bowl would add to Levi’s Stadium’s busy docket for 2026, as it will serve as one of World Cup soccer’s North American venues later that summer.

“I feel very confident we’ll get a Super Bowl in the near future,” 49ers CEO Jed York said in March at the NFL’s annual meetings in Arizona. “It’d be great to get Super Bowl 60 after hosting Super Bowl 50.

“It’d be great to get that game after bringing the World Cup (bid) to Levi’s Stadium. Those are two of the largest sporting events in the world and having them back-to-back would be fantastic.”

Super Bowl LX is three seasons away. The 49ers won their first five Super Bowl appearances before losing their returns in the 2012 and ’19 seasons. The Niners fell a win short of reaching the past two Super Bowls, falling on the road in the NFC Championship Game to the Los Angeles Rams and the Philadelphia Eagles in the 2021 and ’22 seasons.

Future Super Bowl sites are already set for Las Vegas (Feb. 11, 2024) and New Orleans (Feb. 9, 2025).

Levi’s Stadium was just 2-years-old when it hosted Super Bowl 50 on Feb. 7, 2015, when Peyton Manning and the Denver Broncos prevailed 24-10 over the Carolina Panthers. The only previous Super Bowl held in the Bay Area was in January 1985, when the 49ers beat the Miami Dolphins 38-16.

Landing Super Bowl LX would not come as a complete shock. Two months ago, at the NFL’s annual meeting, the 49ers sought to borrow $120 million from the league’s stadium fund to enhance Levi’s Stadium, specifically its seats, suites and scoreboards. Renovations are slated to begin after this coming season.

“The more that we can enhance Levi’s Stadium, the more that we can put into the stadium and keep it our home for a long period of time, we’re going to continue to do that,” York added in March.

Levi’s Stadium’s upcoming events, aside from the 49ers’ eight regular-season home games, include the revenue-generating concerts of Taylor Swift (July 28-29), Beyonce (Aug. 30) and Ed Sheeran (Sept. 16).

The 49ers’ 2023 home slate opens with preseason games against the Denver Broncos (Aug. 19) and the Los Angeles Chargers (Aug. 25), followed by regular-season visits from the New York Giants (Sept. 21), the Arizona Cardinals (Oct. 1), the Dallas Cowboys (Oct. 8), the Cincinnati Bengals (Oct. 29), the Tampa Bay Buccaneers (Nov. 19), the Seattle Seahawks (Dec. 10), the Baltimore Ravens (Dec. 25) and the Rams (Jan. 6 or 7).

Earlier this year, former Los Angeles Dodgers executive Francine Melendez Hughes was hired as general manager of Levi’s Stadium’s operations, a post previously held for nearly three decades by Jim Mercurio, who was among nearly 30 business-side staff members dismissed by the 49ers in February.