Every NFL stadium must install a new playing surface by the start of the 2028 season to meet rigorous standards established through extensive laboratory and field testing, the league announced Thursday.

NFL field director Nick Pappas revealed the mandatory upgrade program, which will provide teams with "a library of approved and accredited NFL fields" before next season begins. Franchises will have two years to comply with the new standards, with flexibility to choose grass, synthetic, or hybrid surfaces.

The fields will undergo comprehensive testing and require approval from a joint committee that includes the NFLPA—a process Pappas compared to the stringent evaluation standards now applied to NFL helmets.

"It's sort of a red, yellow, green effect, where we're obviously trying to phase out fields that we have determined to be less ideal than newer fields coming into the industry," Pappas said. "This is a big step for us. This is something that I think has been a great outcome from the Joint Service Committee of the work, the deployment and development of devices determining the appropriate metrics, and ultimately providing us with a way to substantiate the quality of fields more so than we ever have in the past."

Testing Methodology

The NFL has deployed two primary testing instruments to evaluate all surfaces:

• BEAST: A traction testing device that replicates NFL player movements
• STRIKE Impact Tester: Measures field firmness

The league's goal is to create consistency across all 30 stadiums and maintain uniform playing conditions throughout each season. Pappas identified the "key pillars" of an approved field as optimized playability, reduced injury risk, and player feedback.

No Grass Mandate, Despite Player Preferences

Despite widespread player preference for natural grass and complaints about surfaces like MetLife Stadium's turf—where the Giants and Jets play—the NFL will not mandate natural grass across the league.

NFL Chief Medical Officer Dr. Allen Sills pointed to data showing no "statistically significant differences" in lower extremity injuries or concussions that can be attributed to surface type.

"The surface is only one driver of these lower extremity injuries," Sills said. "There are a lot of other factors, including player load and previous history and fatigue and positional adaptability and cleats that are worn. So surfaces are a component, but it is a complex equation, and so I'm excited about where we are in the work because I think we'll get away from a very crude measurement of artificial here and the grass here, and now we can say for any individual surface, let's look at the biophysical properties of that surface. How might those correlate with injury? And then, obviously, how do we optimize them?"

Super Bowl LIX Field Preparation

The league is already preparing the field for Super Bowl LIX on February 8 at Levi's Stadium in Santa Clara, California. The grass has been growing at a sod farm approximately two hours east of the Bay Area, with Pappas conducting multiple site visits over the past 18 months to monitor progress.

The field installation is scheduled for the third week of January, or later if the 49ers host playoff games.