New Nissan Stadium: the Cable-Net Roof Is Closed, and That Changes Everything on Site
On August 12, 2026, the Titans confirmed the milestone the whole schedule has been organized around since 2024: the ETFE cable-net roof system on the new Nissan Stadium is fully installed. Two of the four tower cranes are already down, exterior framing is close to complete, and the project team expects the building fully enclosed within a couple of months.
For anyone who has run a large enclosure, that sequence reads clearly. Roof closed, cranes coming down, enclosure imminent — that is a job moving from structure to finishes, on a $2.1 billion build with a February 2027 completion and a hard open for the 2027 NFL season.
The roof is the reason this building looks the way it does
Walter P Moore engineered a non-retractable, roughly 350,000-square-foot cable-net ETFE roof spanning about 660 feet. Instead of a conventional long-span steel deck carrying the load in bending, a tensioned cable net does the work and lightweight inflated ETFE panels ride on top of it. Cables run nearly 700 feet, threaded through box beams roughly six feet by six feet via sleeves, then tensioned from the back side to jack the net into position.
That is a fundamentally different structural economy from a steel-deck dome. A cable net in pure tension weighs a fraction of what a comparable long-span truss roof weighs, and the dead load you remove up top is dead load the compression ring, columns, foundations and the entire lower structure never have to carry. The savings compound all the way down to the pile caps.
The tradeoff is that cable-net roofs are unforgiving about sequence. There is no partial roof. The net is a single structural system that only becomes stable when the geometry closes and the tension is right, so the erection is a staged, instrumented lift rather than a piece-by-piece set.
How it actually went up
The installation started in June 2025 and ran roughly 18 months:
- June 2025 — ETFE cable-stayed roof structure installation begins.
- November 2025 — the final ring beam is placed, closing the compression ring that the entire net pulls against.
- January 2026 — 42 of 68 cables unrolled and prepped for connection; the major lift is scheduled for mid-spring.
- Spring 2026 — 109 strand jacks in place, actively lifting the top cable-net grid. The ETFE system reads 52 percent complete in May.
- August 2026 — cable-net system complete; perimeter vertical posts and enclosure work take over.
The number worth sitting with is 109 strand jacks. A lift of that kind is not a crane pick. It is a synchronized hydraulic operation where every jack has to stay within tolerance of every other jack while the net takes load, because differential lift on a tension structure introduces forces the design never contemplated. That operation is the schedule's single point of failure, and it is now behind them.
The structure underneath
The frame topped out on November 21, 2025 with 12,400 beams totaling roughly 18,000 tons of structural steel and about 98,000 cubic yards of concrete in a building of approximately 1.8 million square feet. For scale, 98,000 cubic yards is on the order of 10,000 truckloads of ready-mix into a single East Bank site — a batching and traffic problem in its own right before anyone talks about placement. Estimators sizing similar pours can run the volumes with our concrete calculator, and follow input pricing on the concrete and steel index pages.
Curtain wall was 84 percent complete at the end of January 2026, interior masonry at 80 percent, framing and drywall around 60 percent, and 21 of 27 passenger elevators had platforms set. By May, concrete was 97 percent and framing and drywall 80 percent. That is a job where the envelope ran ahead of the roof — deliberately, because it lets interior trades start in conditioned space on the lower levels while the net is still being tensioned above them.
The money and the delivery model
Total cost is widely reported at $2.1 billion, though Engineering News-Record has used $2.2 billion. Both figures are in circulation; the difference is largely a question of what scope gets counted.
The funding split set an NFL record on the public side: $1.26 billion in public money against $840 million from the Titans and the league. The public portion is $760 million in Metro Nashville sports authority bonds plus $500 million in state bonds, repaid through a new one percent hotel-motel tax, all in-stadium sales tax, and half the sales tax generated across 130 acres around the stadium.
Construction is being delivered by the Tennessee Builders Alliance, a four-firm joint venture of AECOM Hunt (Indianapolis), Turner Construction (New York), I.C.F. Builders & Consultants (Nashville) and Polk & Associates Construction (Brentwood, Tennessee). The structure pairs two national sports builders with two Tennessee firms — a model that has become common on publicly funded venues, where local participation commitments are part of the deal and the JV agreement is where those commitments get operationalized rather than promised. Contractors evaluating the Middle Tennessee market can start with our contractor directory and the state dashboards.
Where the job stands going into fall 2026
The August update is a clean picture of a stadium in its finishes phase:
- Every section in the 200, 300 and 400 levels is drilled and prepped for seat supports; the west end zone in the 100 level is ready as well. Seat installation is next.
- The east LED videoboard is near complete. Work is starting on the west board and the upper ring.
- Concourse walls and ceilings are going in. Tile on the event, mezzanine, concourse and suite levels is past 50 percent.
- Custom millwork is being installed in suites and event spaces.
- Exterior framing is nearly complete and stadium signage is close behind.
Two of four tower cranes are gone. Crane demobilization is one of the more honest schedule indicators on any high-rise or long-span job — a contractor does not give up a tower crane until the material it was feeding is in the building. Losing half the tower cranes with six months to completion says the heavy lifting is genuinely done.
What is left, and the winter problem
The controlling item now is full enclosure, targeted for around October 2026. Nashville winters are not brutal, but they are wet and they swing, and a stadium that is not sealed cannot hold temperature and humidity for tile, millwork, seating, LED assemblies and flooring. Every one of those scopes has an environmental spec. Getting the building tight before the weather turns is what protects a February 2027 finish.
After enclosure: seat installation across the bowl, the west and ring videoboards, concourse finishes, elevator and escalator commissioning, then the systems commissioning and turnover sequence that eats the last quarter of any venue schedule. The building has already begun accepting event bookings, which is its own kind of deadline — a booked calendar removes the option of slipping quietly.
Nashville is also scheduled to host Super Bowl LXIV in 2030, meaning the venue gets three full operating seasons before the biggest event it will ever hold. That is more shakedown time than most Super Bowl hosts get.
Questions readers ask
Who is building the new Nissan Stadium? The Tennessee Builders Alliance, a joint venture of AECOM Hunt, Turner Construction, I.C.F. Builders & Consultants and Polk & Associates Construction. MANICA Architecture is the architect and Walter P Moore is the structural engineer.
What is the roof made of? A tensioned cable net carrying translucent ETFE panels — about 350,000 square feet, roughly 660 feet across, and fixed rather than retractable.
How much did it cost and who paid? $2.1 billion is the widely reported figure, with $2.2 billion appearing in some trade coverage. Public funding covers $1.26 billion; the Titans and the NFL cover $840 million.
When does it open? Construction completion is targeted for February 2027, with the stadium opening for the 2027 NFL season. Super Bowl LXIV is scheduled there in 2030.
How big is it? Roughly 1.8 million square feet with about 60,000 seats.
