The Road to Wrestlemania 42 Starts Now in Louisiana

The biggest pro wrestling event in the world, WWE's Wrestlemania, has now wrapped up for 2025. The multi-day spectacle pushed a city like Las Vegas to its seams this year. With over 120,000 people in attendance for the two night event, and thousands more who came to the city for the auxiliary events surrounding Mania. Videos all weekend showed the infrastructure of Vegas struggling to keep up with the influx of wrestling fans.

Now, the Road to Wrestlemania turns back to Louisiana. As Wrestlemania 42 is set for New Orleans in April of 2026. The show will take place April 11th and 12th at the Superdome.

Can Louisiana Handle Wrestlemania Crowds?

While Las Vegas is able to handle a constant flow of visitors to The Strip, their casinos, and musical events...Wrestlemania is a little different. Its not just two nights of 60,000+ fans attending the official WWE show, there are numerous large wrestling events that travel to whatever city is hosting Wrestlemania. Other wrestling promotions will run show, conventions will host large numbers of wrestling legends to meet fans, and WWE themselves will run additional events.

There may have been 120,000+ fans that attended the literal Wrestlemania shows, but there were so many more who went to Vegas without plans to attend the big event. They went to an NXT show, or Wrestlecon, or WWE Fan Axxess during Wrestlemania weekend. This put additional pressure on Vegas.

So will New Orleans be able to handle that? Absolutely.

The last time Vegas had hosted Wrestlemania was 1993, when the event was much different. Much smaller. But New Orleans has hosted Wrestlemania as recently as 2018. While the 2018 Wrestlemania was still a one-night event (unlike the modern two-night events), they still had all of the extra events surrounding Mania.

In 2018, the Wrestlemania weekend in New Orleans had Wrestlecon, WWE Fan Axxess, multiple NXT events, and other wrestling promotions running events around the city. So New Orleans is going to be much more prepared in 2026 than Las Vegas was in 2025.

What Economic Impact Should Louisiana Expect With Wrestlemania 42?

The economic boom the state of Louisiana will get from hosting Wrestlemania is likely to be massive.

When New Orleans hosted their last Wrestlemania in 2018, there was a $175 million dollar economic impact. Equal to the creation of 1,500+ jobs.

Now the 2018 event was once again a one-night Wrestlemania. In 2026, it will be a two-night event. While that doesn't mean a direct doubling of the economic impact, you can expect the $175 million number to skyrocket with the addition of the second night of the main event.

All of the additional events surrounding Mania will remain, and maybe even get bigger. Which will only help the economic impact for the state.

Can You Predict The Wrestlemania 42 Card?

While this year's Wrestlemania just ended, its going to be hard to predict what that could mean for Wrestlemania 42 in New Orleans. There's one thing that happened at this year's Wrestlemania that we know won't happen next year.

John Cena won his record-breaking 17th World Championship at Wrestlemania 41 in Las Vegas. But Cena had made it clear going into Wrestlemania 41 that it would be his final Wrestlemania match. So even though Cena won the championship, we do know for a fact that he will not wrestle in New Orleans for Wrestlemania 42.

However, names you can expect to see on the Wrestlemania card for New Orleans include Cody Rhodes, Rhea Ripley, Roman Reigns, Seth Rollins, CM Punk, Becky Lynch, Randy Orton, Liv Morgan, and Bron Breakker. Even though its hard for us to predict the Wrestlemania 42 card, others are jumping at the chance.