The first six seats are in – only about 59,994 to go.
The installation of the approximately 60,000 seats in the Buffalo Bills new stadium will take place throughout the summer and into the fall. Those first six seats were placed in the stadium last week and anchoring and bracketing for rails has been put down for more seats to be installed in the lower bowl as part of a process that is expected to take around six to seven months.
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Plastic wraps the first seats installed at the site of the new Buffalo Bills stadium. About 60,000 in total will be installed in a process that will take approximately seven months. Joshua Bessex, Buffalo News
“We’ve met every milestone we’ve had so far – digging the hole, breaking ground, topping out and now with seats,” said Matt Sikora, Turner Construction’s general superintendent.
It’s another critical step in getting things done inside the stadium so that it is completed by July 2026 – a date that is not negotiable, said Pete Guelli, executive vice president and COO of the Bills. The approximately three-year project remains on time as the team approaches two years since the groundbreaking in June 2023.
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“It’s pretty gratifying to see where we are at this point,” Guelli said. “It feels close. It’s exciting to see some of the spaces closing in and visualizing where people will be in the stadium.”
The placing of the seats can be a time-consuming task. There will be around 10 crew members working on it until almost the end of the year.
The first part of the process includes stadium construction workers pouring the concrete steps that go on top of the prefabricated stadia, helping set each aisle. Once those are laid, the work is turned over to the seat contractor, Irwin Seating Co.
Irwin has placed seats in 18 of the 30 NFL stadiums, as well as doing seating in more than half of the venues for the NHL, MLB and NBA.
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Construction workers walk along brackets for seating on the lower level at the site of the new Buffalo Bills stadium. Joshua Bessex/Buffalo News
The company’s installation service workers lay out bracket supports and vertical brackets, before installing the rail mounts that hold and support the main body of the seats. Those brackets and rails already can be seen throughout some of the first level inside the Bills new stadium. An entire area of them will be set up before seats are placed.
Once that’s done, the seats simply slide down and snap into the clips. Seat arms are added and then the cupholders.
“We’ve got to do that 60-some thousand times,” Sikora said. “We’ll be doing seats all summer long.”
There are two crews – one that does the anchor and drilling and the other works on the brackets, before seats are placed in each area.
Bills are getting a head start on new stadium's grass playing field
Having a natural grass surface is going to take significantly more effort to build and maintain, so the Buffalo Bills have already begun the process more than a year before the opening of their $2.2 billion new stadium – around July 2026. This month, the Bills turned the playing surface over to contractor SCG Fields to start the work.
They will focus on finishing first along the south side of the stadium in the lower bowl and then put seats in the club sections, suites and mid-bowl. The same process will be repeated in the upper bowl to finish the seating.
Another important part of what is going on right now inside the stadium is at the ground level, where the systems needed for grass growth for the natural sod field are being put into place. The team hopes to have grass growing by Thanksgiving, Sikora said.
The north end of the field has already been turned over to the field contractor, SCG Fields, which is working on the main drain line. The south end will be turned over to SCG Fields in June and that’s when the field will be off limits for final instillations and grass growth.
The first growing season will be in October, which will test the heating and air systems so that the grass can make it through winter. The second growing season starts next spring as the Bills prepare for the fall 2026 season.
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Construction workers stand by the stadium lights up at the canopy at the site of the new stadium. Joshua Bessex/Buffalo News
As for construction around the stadium, the prefabricated stadia, or structural precast, forming the sections, stairways and aisles all around the stadium, have been placed. Also, the bracketing is up to place the huge video boards on both sides of the facility, and the final pieces of the fifth and final level, or the canopy, are being installed.
The topping out ceremony for the final pieces of the major structural steel to be placed on the project was held in April. This project will include 21,000 pieces of steel and a million and a half square feet of concrete.
Speakers are up throughout the stadium, including under the canopy. Scaffolding is set up high in the air under one part of the canopy for instillation work being done. The canopy will not only provide coverage from the elements to about 65% of fans in the stadium but will also serve other purposes, including being able to melt snow on the roof and helping to hold sound in the stadium.
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The north end seating is visible from the field at the site of the new Buffalo Bills stadium. Joshua Bessex/Buffalo News
The stadium is now “well ahead” of the halfway point in the construction process, Guelli said. The team will need to have an event or two, though, before the Bills play a preseason game in August 2026 to make sure everything is ready for the regular season.
“We need a window in there to test it out,” Guelli said. “We don’t want the first thing we do in that building is to play a football game. We’d love to make sure everything is working properly before we do that.”
Whether it’s overtime or continuing to work throughout the week and into weekends, the stadium will be ready by July 2026, Guelli said.
“Whatever it takes to get this building open, we will do,” he said.
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