Our guide to the new Highmark Stadium, home of the Buffalo Bills, includes information on events, tickets, parking, nearby hotels and restaurants, seating and more. Read on to find out how to get the most out of your gameday experience.

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The Buffalo Bills kicked off a new era in 2026 with the opening of the new Highmark Stadium.

For longtime fans of the team, not a whole lot is changing. The new stadium is located just across the street from where the old one stood in Orchard Park, New York. The old venue was also known as Highmark Stadium for its final few seasons, with the naming rights transferring over to the new facility.

That’s about where the similarities end, though. Built at an estimated cost of $2 billion, the new Highmark Stadium ushers in an era of comfort for a fan base that wasn’t necessarily used to that sort of thing at the previous and largely outdated building.

Then again, the “Bills Mafia” isn’t known for caring about that sort of thing, and there are plenty of creature comforts in this stadium that are accessible to the regular fan. (As well as a great tribute to the fans on the concourse — more on that below.)

The new Highmark Stadium also ushers in an era of venue construction in the NFL, as it’s the first in a line of new buildings that are expected to open over the next five years.

Highmark Stadium events and tickets

Check out upcoming events at Highmark Stadium below.

Getting to Highmark Stadium

Orchard Park, where Highmark Stadium is located, is a suburb about 12 miles south of downtown Buffalo. But the stadium is not far from Interstate 90, which cuts through the city, as well as Route 219 aka the Pittsburgh-Buffalo Highway.

From Route 219, exit at either Milestrip Road (Route 179) if you’re heading south on I-90 or Big Tree Road (Route 20A) if traveling north, then go east toward the stadium.

Meanwhile, from our experience, traveling from the Buffalo airport, exiting Route 219 on Milestrip Road and heading east (against the gameday traffic flow), then turning right on Mid County Drive and right again onto Southwestern Boulevard, turned out to be a viable shortcut.

If you don’t have a car, you can consider taking a taxi or rideshare. However, there is a public transportation alternative run by Buffalo’s local transit organization.

The Metro-NFTA Gameday Express is a bus service that transports fans to the game from seven different points in the Buffalo region. In downtown Buffalo, that pickup spot is the Metropolitan Transportation Center.

Rides cost $5 per person each way, and is payable in cash or by using an app called Token Transit (which is also good for use on Buffalo’s regular bus and rail services).

Buses are limited and schedules vary by location and by each game. Check the Gameday Express site in the week before the game you plan to attend for specific details.

Parking at Highmark Stadium

Highmark Stadium is surrounded by large parking lots on both sides on Abbott Road, the road that passes by the east side of the stadium. The swaths of parking that served the old stadium are still in use for the new facility.

Most of the outer lots are open to the public, while those closer to the stadium (west side of Abbott Road) are reserved for permit holders. Be forewarned that traffic between the stadium and I-90 can get gnarly as kickoff approaches and after games.

There are also plenty of businesses and residences near Highmark Stadium willing to offer up spaces in their parking lots for fans, with the usual discount getting steeper the farther away the lot is from the stadium.

The westbound approach on Southwestern Boulevard has quite a few options, ranging from medical offices and restaurants to a tire store and a guitar store. Fans can also look for options along Abbott Road between Southwestern Boulevard and Milestrip Road, north of the stadium.

Area hotels near Highmark Stadium

For visitors, there’s very little in the way of hotel and lodging selections near Highmark Stadium.

You might find yourself better off choosing from one of the many hotels in and around downtown Buffalo, about 12 miles northwest of the stadium, or near Buffalo Niagara International Airport about 15 miles to the north, and then driving or using public transit to get to Highmark Stadium on game day.

• Red Carpet Inn Orchard Park – 0.4 miles away
• Stadium View Inn – 1.9 miles away
• Econo Lodge Buffalo South – 1.9 miles away
Search for more Orchard Park/Buffalo hotels on Booking.com.

Map of Orchard Park

Check out rates for hotels near Highmark Stadium below.

Things to do around Highmark Stadium

Befitting its suburban locale, there isn’t that much to do in the immediate vicinity of the stadium other than a few mom-and-pop establishments — though they all have strong reputations as gameday hangouts.

In particular, check out Big Tree Inn and Danny’s South (both at the intersection of Abbott and Big Tree roads), and O’Neill’s Stadium Inn at Abbott and Southwestern Boulevard.

The lack of hotels and restaurants in the area also largely means a lack of foot traffic around Highmark Stadium, save for folks walking from their car to the stadium. That’s OK, because that’s a big reason why the tailgating scene is so strong before Bills games.

Especially if you’re a one-time-only visitor, you owe it to yourself to walk around and check out a little bit of the tailgating, which has been known to get elaborate and sometimes a little rowdy.

A portion of Abbott Road alongside the stadium is closed to traffic pregame — it’s in this area where you can usually find the “Billevard,” with sponsor booths and food trucks. The large Bills Store that occupied a standalone building alongside the old stadium remains operational and open to fans before and after games.

While the Bills’ old stadium is now mostly demolished as of August 2026 — work to clear the site is scheduled to be completed in the spring of 2027 — it remains to be seen what will become of the site long-term. One of the possibilities, though, is a mixed-use development similar to what has become commonplace at many large sports venues around the United States.

For more on visiting Buffalo, check out our Buffalo sports travel guide.

Orchard Park restaurants near the stadium

• Big Tree Inn – American, 0.3 miles away
• Danny’s Buffalo Cuisine – American, 0.3 miles away
• O’Neill’s Stadium Inn – pub, 0.4 miles away
Search for more Orchard Park/Buffalo restaurants on Tripadvisor.

Watching a game at Highmark Stadium

Many fans will approach the new Highmark Stadium via an entrance plaza on the north side, along Abbott Road. This area is adorned with two large buffalo statues, sporting the “racing stripe” that is prominent on the Bills’ primary logo, as well as markers for each person in the Bills’ Ring of Honor.

The stadium is surrounded by a security perimeter, which anyone can enter (after passing through security, of course). Inside, you’ll find a handful of food, drink and merchandise stands, as well as a mini-football field and pregame entertainment such as live music.

It’s when you actually enter the stadium structure that a ticket is required.

Once inside, the new Highmark Stadium is every bit the football palace you’d expect a modern venue to be, and it’s a sharp contrast from the old building that the Bills called home for more than 50 years.

It’ll be interesting to see how the Buffalo region’s often-brutal winter weather plays into late-season games at the new stadium, which is far more set up to protect fans from the elements than the old one. Notably, a canopy provides cover for all of the upper deck — which in the summer also shades much of the seating bowl.

Upon the new Highmark Stadium’s opening, much was made of seemingly prevalent obstructed-view seating throughout the stadium. A big factor in this is in the design of the seating bowl, which largely uses sideways-facing staircases that feed into the aisles of the upper deck — forcing fans seated near these entrances to view the field through Plexiglas and deal with fans popping into their line of sight as they ascend the staircase.

There is a positive tradeoff, however, in the fact that both main concourses — lower and upper — offer views of the field nearly all the way around. This allows for fans to have plenty of decent standing-room options for watching the game, as well as to be able to keep an eye on the action while looking to buy food or drink, head to the restroom, etc.

Meanwhile, Highmark Stadium’s press box, which juts out a few rows from the top of the upper deck, creates small blocks of obstructed-view seats at the top of the sections where the press box ends.

In general, if you wish to avoid the chance of heavily obstructed views in the upper deck (400-level sections, that is), choose seats as close to the middle of sections as possible, and try to avoid the first 4-5 rows, especially if they’re near the aisles.

It’s also surprising that the seating capacity at the new Highmark Stadium is just over 60,000, making it one of the smallest in the NFL.

There are plenty of features to like at Highmark Stadium, though. Start with the concourses, which are plenty wide enough in most spots and, at least on the main level, a few notable things worth stopping to look at.

One large display shows a replica of the nearby Peace Bridge that connects the U.S. and Canada — the Bills, owing to Buffalo’s location across from Ontario, have a large number of Canadian fans who cross the border regularly to attend games.

But the display that grabbed most visitors’ attention early on was of a large folding table shown in mid-collapse, a clever tribute to the Bills Mafia and their viral habit of bodyslamming portable tables at tailgates. You can find this display near Section 102 on the southwest side of the main concourse.

On the upper concourse, head to the area behind the north end zone to check out a large opening in the stadium façade that provides a view of the surrounding area, as well as downtown Buffalo and Lake Ontario in the distance.

Food and drink at Highmark Stadium

Highmark Stadium’s concessions options are impressively varied and very reflective of Buffalo’s cuisine. Classic regional dishes like Buffalo wings, “cup and char” pizza and beef on weck sandwiches are readily available throughout the stadium. Poutine is also on offer, owing to the proximity to Canada.

However, one thing you won’t find are the brand names that helped popularize many of these dishes, like Anchor Bar, La Nova, Duff’s Famous, etc. Instead, the stadium’s concessions provider Legends Global is managing the food options, in partnership with a group of local chefs.

Like most major sports venues these days, Highmark Stadium is completely cashless, and many of the venue’s food and drink stands employ “walk in, walk out” technology that allows fans to enter by tapping a credit card, choosing items and then simply exiting.

Several large bar spaces can be found around the main and upper concourses, including at midfield and behind the north end zone on the upper level.

Original publish date: August 18, 2026

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