WrestleMania 42 moved from New Orleans with shock replacement venue lined up

WWE previously announced that its annual showpiece event would take place in the ‘Big Easy’ in 2026

WrestleMania 42 will no longer take place in New Orleans in 2026, per numerous reports, with a shock location apparently the frontrunner to replace the “Big Easy”.

Despite WWE announcing this year that its annual showpiece event would take place at Caesars Superdome next spring, that is no longer the plan, according to the latest updates.

The frontrunner to host next year’s edition of the “Showcase of the Immortals” is Las Vegas, which hosted WrestleMania 41 this April.

The event was a major success for WWE, by many metrics the biggest WrestleMania of all time, as it played out over two nights at Allegiant Stadium. And the 65,000-seater venue may well host WrestleMania 42, per Nola.

Those reports followed Wrestlenomics’s initial article on New Orleans no longer hosting WrestleMania 42, which was confirmed to them by the Greater New Orleans Sports Foundation (GNOSF).

GNOSF said the city is due to host the professional wrestling megashow in the future, but it did not specify which year. Also, New Orleans is due to be home to WWE’s Money In The Bank event in 2026.

WrestleMania returning to Las Vegas would mark an incredibly rare move by WWE. WrestleMania 4 and 5 were both held in Atlantic City, New Jersey, but they are the only examples of a city hosting back-to-back editions of the event.

John Cena (right) and Cody Rhodes headlined night two of WrestleMania 41 in April (Getty Images)

WWE executive Paul Levesque, who previously competed in the promotion under the ring name “Triple H”, has pushed the idea of London hosting WrestleMania in recent years. Mayor Sadiq Khan appears interested, yet WrestleMania’s location is decided by a site bid, meaning representatives from the English capital would need to beat out other potential hosts financially.

It is unclear why WWE is seemingly going back on its announcement that New Orleans would host WrestleMania 42, but it is possible that the success of this year’s Las Vegas edition was one factor, along with the possibility of a strong site bid from Sin City, and the relationship between Vegas and WWE’s ownership group TKO – which stages many UFC events there each year.

New Orleans most recently hosted WrestleMania in 2018, after staging WrestleMania 30 in 2014.