NHL’s 2027 Winter Classic set for New Year’s Eve in Salt Lake City
News — 4 October 2026
The NHL has set the 2027 Winter Classic for New Year’s Eve: on 31 December 2026, the Utah Mammoth will host the Colorado Avalanche at Rice-Eccles Stadium in Salt Lake City. Commissioner Gary Bettman announced the date and said the game will start in the late afternoon or early evening, prime time in the Eastern United States: “Part of it will be under the lights, and we think it’ll be very cool.”
Utah’s first outdoor game
The Winter Classic will be the NHL’s 47th regular-season outdoor game and the first for the Mammoth, the league’s youngest franchise. When the puck drops on real ice, all 32 NHL teams will have played outdoors: before this season only Utah and the Florida Panthers had not, and Florida hosted the 2026 Winter Classic against the New York Rangers at loanDepot park in Miami on 2 January.
Colorado arrives with experience: the Avalanche have played three outdoor games — a 5-3 loss to Detroit at Coors Field in 2016, a 3-1 loss to the Los Angeles Kings at Falcon Stadium in 2020 and a 3-2 win over Vegas at NHL Outdoors at Lake Tahoe in 2021.
An Olympic stadium above the city
Rice-Eccles Stadium, on the University of Utah campus, seats more than 54,000 for college football and sits some 1,400 metres above sea level with views of the Wasatch Range. It hosted the opening and closing ceremonies of the 2002 Salt Lake Winter Olympics — where the 1980 “Miracle on Ice” team lit the cauldron — and will host them again at the 2034 Games. Owner Ryan Smith has promised a full weekend of activities around the game, including a New Year’s Eve concert and the ball drop at the Delta Center.
Three outdoor games in one season
The 2027 Winter Classic is the second of three outdoor games on the 2026-27 calendar. The Winnipeg Jets host the Montreal Canadiens in the Heritage Classic on 25 October 2026 at Princess Auto Stadium, and the Dallas Stars face the Vegas Golden Knights in the Stadium Series on 20 February 2027 at AT&T Stadium.
What it takes to freeze a football field
Building a real-ice rink inside an American football stadium is one of the most demanding jobs in the ice world: a level surface over the turf, refrigeration sized for outdoor temperatures that swing from afternoon sun to mountain night, and continuous ice maintenance between sessions. Salt Lake City’s late-December climate helps, but the engineering has to absorb everything else — that is the daily work of real-ice specialists. Napapiri designs, manufactures, rents and sells real-ice rinks since 1993 for event organizers, municipalities and sports and leisure facilities worldwide; quotation within 24 hours.
Cover photo: Rice-Eccles Stadium in Salt Lake City during a Utah Utes college football game, October 2016. Venue archive photo: it does not show the 2027 Winter Classic or a Napapiri installation. Byarin / Wikimedia Commons / CC0 1.0. Original photograph used without modifications.
