Jaguars Set to Move to Orlando for 2027 Season
The Jacksonville Jaguars won’t play a home game in 2027.
The NFL’s 32 league owners voted unanimously Tuesday to allow the Jaguars to play in Orlando’s Camping World Stadium during the 2027 season. Renovations to EverBank Stadium in Jacksonville prompted the move, and home games for the 2026 season in EverBank will be at limited capacity —approximately 43,000. The 2027 move is even more dramatic, as players will still train in Jacksonville, but travel all the way to Orlando for their “home” games.
But will fans show up?
For starters, Camping World doesn’t have a pool in the north endzone, and the Duval chant won’t really make sense in the new environment. However, the $400-million stadium renovation to EverBank, funded by Orange County, is likely to be completed by summer 2027, expanding the capacity to more than 65,000. That may be worth the rough pair of seasons, though they’ll be some rough seasons.
It’s a straight shot from EverBank stadium down I-95 and then west on I-4. Two hours later, not accounting for gameday traffic, fans will finally pull into the parking lot of Camping World Stadium. The trek is a lot to ask of the average NFL fan on a random Sunday, so the Jaguars will likely rely on Orlando residents for a thrilling gameday atmosphere.
Prior to the 2025 season, Vividseats put together an NFL fan map that tracks ticketing data by zip code based on the number of tickets sold to a team’s games from 2024 to 2025. Jacksonville isn’t the biggest market in the world, with fans typically spanning northern Florida and southern Georgia. Competition with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Miami Dolphins keeps the Jaguars in their place in the northern part of the state, as both other fanbases are more extensive. And in Orange County, the map is creamsicle. It turns out Orlando doesn’t necessarily support the Jags — it supports the Bucs. Not to mention Orlando only gets a one-year rental out of the Jaguars, so it’s questionable if local fans will commit to the new team in town.
Ben Hill Griffin Stadium at the University of Florida was in consideration for the Jaguars move in 2027. While The Swamp prompted questions of whether it could fulfill all the requirements NFL games call for, the stadium is only 75 miles away from EverBank compared to 142 miles Camping World is. According to VividSeats’s fan map, Alachua County lights up teal, as well. UF’s campus is littered with 60,000+ students roaming during the NFL season, who could also fill seats. But unfortunately for the Jaguars, the decision has been made, and Orlando will be their temporary home away from home in what is potentially another away game every week.
The Gators especially don’t benefit from the Jaguars’ move to Orlando. Not only will Gainesville miss out on Jaguars games, but the annual Florida-Georgia game won’t be in Jacksonville until 2028 due to EverBank’s renovations. Instead of moving the games to Camping World Stadium, “The World’s Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party” will be held in Atlanta at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in 2026 and then Tampa’s Raymond-James Stadium in 2027, with both locations obviously being a worse drive for Gators fans than Jacksonville.
Lucky for the Jags, the introduction of Liam Coen as their new coach instantly rolled them into a better-equipped team to perform in difficult environments. Before Coen’s infamous introduction, which went viral for his odd exclamation of “Duval,” the Jaguars were 1-8 on the road during the 2024 season. At that point, the 2028 Orlando adventure would’ve looked cataclysmic. After an impressive 2025 season that ended in the first round of the playoffs at home against the Buffalo Bills, the Jaguars were all-in-all 6-2 on the road. A travel every week might tell a different story, but Coen is off to a hot start in building a winning team and passionate fanbase that might have more motivation to make the drive to Orlando.
The Jaguars will return home in the 2028 season to quite the face lift. The EverBank renovation amounts to $1.4 billion and will be split equally by the city of Jacksonville and Jaguars owner Shad Khan. The city will also contribute to maintenance and repairs to prepare the stadium for construction, getting ready to turn Jacksonville into a city built on football.
For now, it’ll just have to be a city with football two hours south.
Category: Jacksonville Jaguars, NFL
