For months, the Chicago Bears said Hammond, Indiana, was their only focus. They said it in August, and they kept saying it. But in the NFL, what a team says in public and what it does behind closed doors are rarely the same thing, and a new report suggests that gap may be wider than anyone realized.
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Soldier Field stands as the Chicago Bears’ home stadium. Located on Chicago’s Near South Side next to Lake Michigan, it is the oldest stadium in the NFL (opened in 1924) and holds a capacity of 61,500. The Bears have called it home since 1971, and their current lease runs through 2033.
However, an entirely different storyline began when the teases about relocating to Northwest Indiana officially began in December 2025, after their plans to move to Arlington Heights were completely paralyzed for over three years due to a multi-million-dollar property tax gridlock. But now, the Bears are reportedly set to stay in Illinois.
“[The Bears are] close to a deal that would keep them in Illinois,” per Greg Hinz of the Crain’s Chicago Business. (H/t: Mike Florio of PFT).
Following the Bears’ interest, in February 2026, Indiana lawmakers, moving at lightning speed, passed Senate Bill 27. Signed instantly by Governor Mike Braun, the bill establishes a Northwest Indiana Stadium Authority with a framework to provide $1 billion in public financing incentives for a stadium in Hammond, Indiana.
Shortly after, in May 2026, the Bears officially stated they have “exhausted every opportunity” in the city of Chicago while declaring their options narrowed down strictly to Arlington Heights or Hammond.
“The Chicago Bears have exhausted every opportunity to stay in Chicago, which was our initial goal,” the Bears statement read. “There is not a viable site in the city. As a result, the only sites under consideration are in Arlington Heights and Hammond.”
A few weeks later, in June 2026, the Bears’ Board of Directors formally voted to advance stadium development in Hammond, Indiana. With that, they also zeroed in on environmental and soil testing at the Wolf Lake Terminal and Lost Marsh sites.
While the board’s vote did not mean the team was guaranteed to pack up and move immediately, it marked an escalation in the stadium battle. As such, prior to the vote, team President Kevin Warren could only have preliminary conversations with Indiana officials.
But the formal board approval gave the executive team the legal and financial authority to spend millions of dollars on the Hammond project. Following that, in August 2026, Kevin Warren also publicly maintained his thoughts about relocating to Hammond.
“Our sole focus at this point in time is working on a world-class development in Northwest Indiana,” the Bears team president and CEO said.
However, despite the chaos around relocating to Indiana, per the latest reports, the Chicago Bears are securing their long-term future in Illinois through a new legislative framework.
The new framework under discussion allows an Illinois municipality to form an independent authority to own and operate the facility. Because it will be publicly owned and leased by the Bears, the stadium will be exempt from property taxes, resolving the exact multi-million-dollar dispute that stalled the Arlington Heights project in the first place.
According to Greg Hinz of Crain’s Chicago Business, the development from Illinois’ side was possible after the involvement of Bears minority owner Pat Ryan and NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, who were seemingly against the Bears moving to Indiana.
However, as things stand, the Illinois legislature is preparing for a make-or-break vote on the stadium authority bill during the upcoming November/December session, where Arlington Heights is expected to be the new home for the Bears, which is roughly 26 miles away from the current stadium, Soldier Field, in Illinois.