Every NFL Stadium With a Dome or Retractable Roof

Ten of the NFL's 30 stadiums have a roof over the field. Five are fixed — Caesars Superdome, Ford Field, U.S. Bank Stadium, Allegiant Stadium and SoFi Stadium — and five retract: NRG Stadium, State Farm Stadium, Lucas Oil Stadium, AT&T Stadium and Mercedes-Benz Stadium. The other 20 are open-air.

That clean split hides some genuinely odd buildings. One "fixed roof" stadium has open sides and can still get a lightning delay. Two open-air stadiums cover most of their seats but leave the field exposed. And several retractable roofs almost never actually open. Below is every venue, sorted honestly, along with the seating numbers you'll find in The 20 Largest NFL Stadiums by Capacity.

The Short Answer

Every NFL Stadium With a Roof Over the Field

Note the two entries that resist easy labeling. SoFi Stadium is usually called a dome and isn't one: the canopy floats above a bowl whose sides are open to the air, which is why SoFi games can still see lightning delays. Allegiant Stadium is genuinely enclosed and climate-controlled, but its playing surface spends most of the week outside on a rolling tray so the Bermuda grass gets real sunlight.

Every Open-Air NFL Stadium

Several of the names in that column are relatively recent purchases rather than long-standing identities — see Every Stadium Named After a Bank, Ranked and 10 Stadiums That Changed Names the Most.

Three of these deserve their own footnote. Hard Rock Stadium added a canopy in 2016 that keeps as many as 92% of fans dry — but it has a football-field-sized hole in the middle, so the players get wet while the crowd stays dry. Lumen Field's roof covers about 70% of seats and deliberately leaves the field open; it also reflects crowd noise back down, which is a large part of why Seattle games are so loud. Highmark Stadium, brand new in 2026, wraps 64% of the bowl in a 360-degree canopy purely to break Buffalo's wind.

Why the Roof Matters If You're Going to a Game

If you have a ticket, the roof answers your first practical question: what do I wear?

In a fixed-roof stadium — New Orleans, Detroit, Minneapolis, Las Vegas — wear whatever you'd wear indoors. Temperature is controlled, there is no wind, and no rain gear is required. In a retractable-roof stadium you will not know for certain until roughly 90 minutes before kickoff (see below), so dress for the forecast. At SoFi Stadium, plan for shade rather than climate control; the canopy blocks sun and most rain, but the temperature is whatever Inglewood is doing that day.

Open-air is open-air. Lumen Field, Lincoln Financial Field, Hard Rock Stadium and the new Highmark Stadium will keep the rain off your head if you are in a covered section, but check your seat location — the lower bowl in most of those buildings is not covered. The roof also shapes the pregame experience: the best parking-lot scenes are almost all at open-air venues, as 12 Stadiums With the Best Tailgating in America makes clear.

For viewers, the roof is why a January game in Minneapolis looks nothing like one in Green Bay: dome games are played at a fixed 70 degrees with no wind, which favors passing and kicking.

Which Retractable Roofs Actually Open — and the 90-Minute Rule

The NFL has a written procedure for this, and it applies to the five retractable-roof venues.

• The home team must tell the referee whether the roof will be open or closed up to 90 minutes before kickoff, and any movement has to finish before warmups begin.
• After that deadline, the decision belongs to the referee in coordination with the league's football operations department, not the home club.
• An open roof can be closed for rain or hazardous weather up to the 5:00 mark of the fourth quarter. After that, and in overtime, it stays open unless there is a public-safety emergency.
• Once the roof is closed mid-game, it does not reopen.
• In the postseason, football operations makes the call in the wild card and divisional rounds; for conference championships and the Super Bowl, the commissioner or a designate decides.

In practice, most of these roofs stay shut. NRG Stadium in Houston is the notorious case: the Texans went from November 30, 2014 to 2020 without opening the roof for a game, with players openly saying the closed building keeps the crowd noise in and guarantees 72-degree conditions. Mercedes-Benz Stadium opened its roof only twice in its first season and remains selective about it. AT&T Stadium and Lucas Oil Stadium open more often but still keep the roof closed for the majority of home games. State Farm Stadium in Arizona is the most likely of the five to play under open sky, thanks to the desert climate — its roof was open for Super Bowl LVII in February 2023 in roughly 64-degree weather.

There is one documented reversal: on November 3, 2024, State Farm Stadium became the first NFL venue to change a pregame roof decision mid-game, when rain and hail hit the field in the first quarter.

The Cold-Weather Open-Air Stadiums

Thirteen NFL teams play outdoors in genuinely cold markets, and several of those franchises treat it as a competitive asset. Lambeau Field, the new Highmark Stadium, Soldier Field, Gillette Stadium, MetLife Stadium, Arrowhead Stadium, Empower Field at Mile High, Acrisure Stadium, Huntington Bank Field, M&T Bank Stadium, Lincoln Financial Field, Paycor Stadium and Northwest Stadium all host December and January football with no roof over the field.

Green Bay is the emblem. The 1967 NFL Championship — the Ice Bowl — was played at Lambeau at roughly 13 below zero, and the Packers have never seriously entertained enclosing the building. Lambeau opened in 1957 and is the oldest venue in continuous NFL use, one of the anchors of The Oldest Stadiums Still in Use in American Sports. Buffalo made the same choice in 2026, spending $2.1 billion on a new stadium and deliberately leaving it open, on the theory that lake-effect weather is part of the Bills' identity. The compromise was engineering rather than a roof: heated concourses, radiant heating in some seating areas and a very large snow-melt system.

The trend runs the other way elsewhere. Nashville's 2027 replacement for Nissan Stadium is fully enclosed with a translucent roof, and Cleveland's planned Brook Park stadium is enclosed too — both covered in 8 New NFL Stadiums Opening This Decade (and What They Cost).

The Domed Stadiums That Have Hosted Super Bowls

The NFL requires host cities to be warm in early February or to have a roof, which is why domes are so heavily represented.

The Superdome's eight is the record for any venue. Exactly one Super Bowl has ever been played outdoors in a cold-weather market: Super Bowl XLVIII at MetLife Stadium on February 2, 2014, which the league approved as a one-off. The full venue history is in Every Stadium That Has Hosted a Super Bowl.

FAQ

How many NFL stadiums have domes? Ten of 30 have a roof over the field — five fixed and five retractable. The other 20 are open-air, though three of those cover most of their seats.

Is SoFi Stadium a dome? Not really. It has a fixed translucent canopy over the bowl, but the sides of the building are open to the outside air, so it is not sealed or fully climate-controlled the way the Superdome or U.S. Bank Stadium is.

Which NFL stadium was the first with a retractable roof? NRG Stadium in Houston, which opened in 2002. Its two fabric panels can open in about seven minutes.

Who decides whether the roof is open? The home team declares its choice up to 90 minutes before kickoff. After that the referee, working with the league's football operations department, controls any change — and can order a roof closed for weather up to the 5:00 mark of the fourth quarter.

Do domes give the home team an advantage? Teams believe so. Closed roofs trap crowd noise, a real problem for visiting offenses, and they remove wind and rain from the home team's passing and kicking game.

Which NFL stadiums have a grass field that rolls outside? Two: State Farm Stadium in Glendale and Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas. Both park a natural-grass tray outdoors between games so the turf gets sunlight, then roll it into the building for kickoff.

Are new NFL stadiums all being built with roofs? Mostly. Nashville's 2027 stadium and Cleveland's planned Brook Park venue are both enclosed. Buffalo's 2026 Highmark Stadium is the conspicuous exception — deliberately open-air with a partial canopy.

When is this page updated? Whenever a stadium opens, closes or changes its roof configuration. The next scheduled change is the Titans' enclosed stadium in 2027.