The NFL Draft, Green Bay vs. Pittsburgh

GREEN BAY – The 2026 NFL Draft took place in Pittsburgh, Penn. from April 23-25, reaching a new record Draft attendance of 805,000 people over the three days.

Though the Pittsburgh Steelers-hosted Draft surpassed the overall attendance of Green Bay’s by over 200,000 people, there are many other details to consider when comparing the two most recent Drafts.

For one, the population of the Green Bay metropolitan area is approximately 335,000 residents. The population of the Pittsburgh metropolitan area is approximately 2.42 million residents.

So while Green Bay doubled its population in attendance, Pittsburgh brought in about a third of their total population.

In speaking with Green Bay Packers fans who traveled to attend both the 2025 and 2026 NFL Drafts, the Pittsburgh Draft campus also seemed far more spread out and required significantly more walking.

“I liked how close together ours was. Everything was a lot tighter together, and I was not wearing my walking shoes (for Pittsburgh)” said one Green Bay native who travelled to Pittsburgh for the 2026 NFL Draft after attending Green Bay’s the year prior.

For the 2025 Draft campus, Draft attendees were directed to the area between Lambeau Field and the Titletown district with the stage placed along Oneida Street. When access to the viewing grounds in front of the Draft Theater was cut off in 2025 about 45 minutes prior to the 7 p.m. CST start time, approximately 10,000 fans were directed into overflow viewing inside Lambeau Field.

For Pittsburgh, the Draft Stage was located along the east side of Acrisure Stadium, requiring people to circumvent the entire stadium when entering from the west side with Draft events, games and vendors surrounding the entire stadium.

In Pittsburgh, overflow viewing was directed into Acrisure Stadium as well when the viewing grounds outside the Draft Theater hit capacity approximately 30 minutes before the start of the Draft at 8 p.m. ET.

While Green Bay’s Draft also seemed to focus significantly on the food and culture of the area, such as cheesehead merchandise, cheesecurds and brats, the Draft in Pittsburgh catered more towards a general audience with NFL and Draft merchandise available for purchase in the pop-up stores and a general food menu at the Draft-sanctioned food stands featuring burgers, hot dogs and nachos.

Though, once inside the Draft Theater viewing grounds, Pittsburgh-centered Heinz offered a sampling of several of their 57 sauce flavors to accompany fresh-cooked french fries, as well as the opportunity to enter their free Heinz photo booth.

Although in 2025 Packers fans stuck around for their No. 23 overall pick in the first round to see Matthew Golden walk across the stage, Pittsburgh Steelers fans were visibly and audibly disappointed when ASU offensive tackle Max Iheanachor was chosen after top prospect and wide reciever from USC Makai Lemon was taken just before when the Philidelphia Eagles swooped in and traded up with the Dallas Cowboys for the 20th overall pick.

Though offical fianancial impact and statistics will not be released for several months, quality over quantity seems to be the consensus for Packers fans on an intial comparison between the 2025 and 2026 NFL Drafts.