A decade of miracles, comebacks and disappointments at U.S. Bank Stadium recalls the Vikings’ long, winding journey through their Twin Cities homes.
When the Minnesota Vikings open their 2026 season by hosting the archrival Green Bay Packers on Sunday, September 13, they will begin their 11th season at U.S. Bank Stadium. The game comes five days before the 10th anniversary of the first regular-season contest there, a 17-14 Vikings victory over, you guessed it, the Packers on September 18, 2016. The 2026 schedule thus has a pleasing symmetry.
The stadium itself opened on July 22, 2016. Its first ticketeded event was an August 3 soccer match between A.C. Milan and Chelsea. The Vikings made their debut there on August 28, defeating the then-San Diego Chargers 23-10 in a preseason game.
The original $975 million financing plan called for $498 million in public funding, consisting of $348 million from the state and $150 million from the City of Minneapolis, and $477 million from the Vikings. Subsequent private additions and upgrades pushed the total cost above $1 billion.
The inaugural regular-season game featured newly acquired quarterback Sam Bradford, who joined the Vikings after starting quarterback Teddy Bridgewater seriously injured his knee during a late-summer practice. Bradford sat out the opening road victory over Tennessee but started against Green Bay and led the Vikings to four more wins, giving them a 5-0 start. Then they floundered, finishing with a mediocre 8-8 record and missing the playoffs.
Bradford, who had his own extensive knee-injury history, nevertheless had a good season. He set an NFL record by completing 71.6% of his passes, although many were short throws dumped off for modest gains. Drew Brees of the New Orleans Saints surpassed him two years later with a 74.4% completion rate, the season after Brees endured his own U.S. Bank Stadium nightmare. More about that later.
Built primarily for the Vikings on the footprint of its predecessor, the Metrodome, U.S. Bank Stadium has hosted many other attractions. Its concert roster has included Fleetwood Mac, the Rolling Stones, Taylor Swift, Billy Joel and Stevie Nicks on a joint bill, and Paul McCartney in 2025.
The stadium also hosted the two-night WWE SummerSlam event during the first weekend of this August. See “Wrestling ‘Slam’ Here Recalls Grappling History in Twin Cities” in the July 25, 2026, edition of Minneapolis Times.
Memorable Moments
The Vikings have enjoyed a respectable tenure in the building. They completed their first 10 regular seasons at U.S. Bank Stadium with 54 victories in 81 games, a .667 winning percentage.
The most unforgettable moment was the “Minneapolis Miracle,” the January 2018 playoff game in which the Vikings defeated the Brees-led Saints 29-24. Case Keenum connected with Stefon Diggs for a 61-yard touchdown on the final play, propelling Minnesota into the NFC Championship Game the following week. There, the Vikings were thrashed 38-7 by the Philadelphia Eagles.
That miracle supplied the franchise with a bit of vengeance for the sting of its 1975 playoff loss at Metropolitan Stadium. The Dallas Cowboys won that game 17-14 on the infamous “Hail Mary” pass from Roger Staubach to Drew Pearson in the final minute.
Two weeks after clubbing the Vikings in the NFC Championship Game, the Eagles returned to Minnesota for Super Bowl LII at U.S. Bank Stadium. They defeated the New England Patriots 41-33.
It was the second Super Bowl played in Minneapolis, 26 years after Super Bowl XXVI at the Metrodome. In that game, Washington defeated Buffalo 37-24. The Vikings, alas, were spectators for both.
Another game etched into the memory of Vikings fans was the team’s record-setting comeback against Indianapolis in 2022. Minnesota trailed 33-0 at halftime before storming back to win 39-36 in overtime, completing the largest comeback in NFL history.
But the Vikings have taken their lumps in the stadium, too. Those disappointments include the 31-24 Wild Card playoff loss to the New York Giants in January 2023, after the Vikings had won the NFC North title.
Vagabond Vikings
As U.S. Bank Stadium commemorates its 10th anniversary, the Vikings can look back on an early history marked by a decidedly vagabond existence.
Minnesota was awarded the NFL’s 14th franchise in 1960, and the Vikings began play in 1961. The league now has 32 teams playing a 17-game regular-season schedule followed by multiple rounds of playoffs leading to the Super Bowl, which did not exist when the Vikings were born.
The first of the franchise’s three permanent homes was Metropolitan Stadium in Bloomington. The five-member founding group paid a $1 million expansion fee to enter the league with a ragtag roster.
In 2025, Forbes estimated the franchise’s value at $6.25 billion, more than 6,000 times that original fee. That is a pretty good return, even by the gaudy standards of President Trump and his family members’ crypto ventures.
Playing in a stadium designed primarily for baseball, the Vikings eventually became one of the league’s premier teams. They won the 1969 NFL Championship and advanced to four Super Bowls during the 1970s, losing all four in unforgettable fashion.
In addition to Twins baseball and Vikings football, the Met hosted professional wrestling and its most noteworthy nonathletic event: the Beatles’ only Minnesota appearance. The August 21, 1965, concert drew a less-than-full stadium for a short, 11-song, half-hour performance, a rare nonsellout during the Fab Four’s stadium-rock heyday.
While ensconced at the Met for regular-season and playoff games, the team remained peripatetic.
The Vikings held their first five training camps in Bemidji. In 1966, they moved to Mankato, where they were housed on the campus of what was then Mankato State University, now Minnesota State University, Mankato. Mankato served as the team’s summer home for 52 training camps through 2017.
In 2018, training camp moved to the team’s headquarters in Eagan at the Twin Cities Orthopedics Performance Center, which includes TCO Stadium for selected practices, scrimmages and occasional high school football games.
During the season, the early Vikings also had difficulty finding a regular practice facility. In September and occasionally into October, the Twins were the principal tenant at Metropolitan Stadium, preventing the football team from practicing there during the week. The Vikings consequently moved around the Twin Cities, occasionally using Midway Stadium in St. Paul, University of Minnesota facilities and high school fields.
When late-season frost arrived, the Vikings sometimes stayed away from the Met to preserve the field for Sunday. The squad searched for alternate sites with the persistence of St. Paulites hunting for the Winter Carnival medallion.
The transient status ended when the team built its own training facility in Eden Prairie. Winter Park was named for Max Winter, one of the five original franchise founders and a principal owner into the 1980s.
The team also moved its business headquarters there from a cramped, one-story building on France Avenue across from Southdale. In a transition that might be regarded as suitable for a team with so many dead seasons, that former headquarters now houses the Cremation Society of Minnesota.
The Vikings have also traveled well internationally. Through 2025, they were 5-1 in regular-season games outside the United States and 9-1 when their four victorious international exhibitions are included.
One of those exhibitions was a 17-9 victory over the Kansas City Chiefs in Tokyo in 1994, not 1974. The other three took place in London in 1983, Sweden in 1988 and Berlin in 1993. The Vikings’ international exhibition history is spotless.
They will take the show abroad again this season, traveling to Mexico City on November 22 to face San Francisco in a designated 49ers home game.
Dome Days and a Campus Detour
After two decades in Bloomington, the Vikings moved into the Metrodome in 1982 and remained there through 2013. The Twins shared the building but frequently chafed at a facility better suited to football than baseball.
Nevertheless, the Twins won World Series championships there in 1987 and 1991 before moving to Target Field in 2010.
The Vikings were not so fortunate, never reaching a Super Bowl during their Metrodome tenure. The club had its share of up-and-down seasons while the facility hosted tractor pulls, monster-truck exhibitions and concerts by performers such as the Rolling Stones and Madonna.
The Metrodome also staged Verne Gagne’s AWA WrestleRock ’86, along with college baseball and basketball. Although hardly suitable for the latter, it hosted the NCAA men’s Final Four in 1992 and 2001, both won by Duke.
The facility also had a taste of professional basketball. The Minnesota Timberwolves played their inaugural 1989-90 season there and established an NBA attendance record before Target Center opened.
The Vikings’ stadium wanderings briefly returned after the Metrodome roof collapsed in December 2010. A scheduled home game against the New York Giants was moved to Ford Field in Detroit, where Brett Favre’s NFL-record streak of 297 consecutive regular-season starts ended because he was unable to play.
One week later, Favre returned against the Chicago Bears at TCF Bank Stadium on the University of Minnesota campus. He suffered a concussion in what became the final game of his career.
That snowy night provided a preview of the Vikings’ temporary residence at the university. The team played the 2014 and 2015 seasons at TCF Bank Stadium, now Huntington Bank Stadium, while U.S. Bank Stadium was being built. The Metrodome roof collapse and its aftermath became one more chapter in the franchise’s long stadium saga.
Dystopian Description
Beginning in the early 2000s, the Vikings campaigned for a new stadium with more lucrative suites and the contemporary accoutrements common in newer NFL facilities. The effort accompanied a similar campaign by the Twins for their own ballpark.
Although the Vikings never issued an explicit relocation ultimatum, the possibility of the team pulling up stakes lurked in the background. Other franchises had moved during similar stadium machinations. The prospect frightened many sports fans and revived Hubert Humphrey’s long-ago dystopian description of the Twin Cities without major professional teams as “a cold Omaha.”
But the Vikings were neither frozen out nor left out in the cold.
In May 2012, the Minnesota Legislature and Minneapolis City Council approved the public financing package for the new stadium. The Vikings supplied their share and later paid for additional upgrades. The team separately sold the facility’s naming rights to U.S. Bank.
The Metrodome was torn down after the 2013 season, and U.S. Bank Stadium opened in 2016.
The Vikings have enjoyed considerable regular-season success in the building without reaching the postseason heights that ownership and fans desire. Their hopes are high as they begin the stadium’s second decade, starting as they did 10 years ago, against the Packers.
SKOL!
