Tampa Bay Rays: 2026 Home and the Tampa Ballpark Plan

The Rays' 2026 home ballpark is Tropicana Field, 1 Tropicana Dr in St. Petersburg, across the bay from Tampa, not Steinbrenner Field in Tampa, where they played in 2025 (Tampa Bay Rays).

The return to the Trop came on Monday, April 6, 2026, when the Rays' home opener against the Chicago Cubs sold out, the club's 20th straight sold-out home opener not counting the fan-free 2020 season (Rays press release). The team sells tickets only as mobile tickets through the MLB Ballpark app (Tampa Bay Rays).

St. Petersburg is a temporary arrangement on the Rays' own timeline. The team says its use agreement at Tropicana Field is set to expire after the 2028 season (Tampa Bay Rays), and the plan approved in Tampa in August 2026 aims at a new ballpark in Hillsborough County by April 2029 (Hillsborough County).

The franchise itself dates from March 9, 1995, when Major League Baseball owners meeting in West Palm Beach welcomed the Tampa Bay Devil Rays and the Arizona Diamondbacks as expansion teams; tickets for the first Opening Day in 1998 sold out in 17 minutes, and the 2008 Rays reached the World Series, losing to the Phillies in five games (Rays franchise timeline).

The Rays played the 2025 season at Steinbrenner Field in Tampa because Hurricane Milton badly damaged Tropicana Field in October 2024 (Tampa Bay Rays).

The club announced the move on November 14, 2024, saying the Trop was not expected to be repaired until 2026 and that the Yankees' spring training park on North Dale Mabry Highway, also home of the Single-A Tampa Tarpons, would be its home for the regular season; the season was to open there against the Colorado Rockies on March 27, 2025, with spring training staying at Charlotte Sports Park in Port Charlotte (Tampa Bay Rays).

Steinbrenner Field is public property. Hillsborough County has owned the ballpark, then called Legends Field, since the Tampa Sports Authority handed it over on September 30, 1998 (TSA timeline), and the authority describes itself as the field's landlord today (Tampa Sports Authority).

One official listing has not caught up. As of October 18, 2026 the City of Tampa's stadiums page still describes Steinbrenner Field as the temporary home of the Tampa Bay Rays (City of Tampa), a description that ended with the 2025 season.

The planned Rays ballpark would sit at the corner of Dale Mabry Highway and West Tampa Bay Boulevard, near Raymond James Stadium and Tampa International Airport, on Hillsborough College's Dale Mabry campus (Hillsborough County).

The Rays describe the campus as about 113 acres, across Dale Mabry Highway from Raymond James Stadium and just south of Steinbrenner Field, where the team spent 2025 (Tampa Bay Rays). In January 2026, the team's release says, the Hillsborough College District Board of Trustees voted unanimously for a non-binding memorandum of understanding to pursue the stadium and a mixed-use district there, giving the two sides 180 days of exclusive negotiation.

The county frames the project as more than a stadium. Board of County Commissioners Chair Ken Hagan called it a step toward a forever home for the Rays that would integrate a new Hillsborough College campus into an $8 billion private sector investment (Hillsborough County). The team's release says that in the meantime Hillsborough College will operate a temporary on-site campus called The Nest (Tampa Bay Rays).

Tampa City Council voted 4-3 on August 27, 2026 to move forward with the Rays agreement, and Hillsborough County commissioners followed on August 28 with a 5-2 vote on the Dale Mabry campus ballpark project (City of Tampa; Hillsborough County).

The county's release is titled as approval of a Development and Funding Agreement, Guaranty, and Team Non-Relocation Agreement, and says the vote followed months of negotiation among Hillsborough County, the City of Tampa, the Rays and the Tampa Sports Authority, with discussions also held with Hillsborough College and the state of Florida (Hillsborough County). The city's release, posted the day before, said the agreement still needed the county vote, which would determine whether the ballpark agreement was finalized (City of Tampa).

The Rays' account of the county vote names the five commissioners in favor as Ken Hagan, Harry Cohen, Gwen Myers, Christine Miller and Chris Boles, and the two against as Donna Cameron Cepeda and Joshua Wostal (Tampa Bay Rays). The team also says its new ownership group, led by managing partner Patrick Zalupski, took control of the franchise in September 2025, about 11 months before the votes.

By the Rays' figures, Hillsborough County covers $796 million of a projected $2.36 billion ballpark, the City of Tampa $80 million, and the team about $1.37 billion plus all cost overruns (Tampa Bay Rays).

The release says the fixed-roof stadium would have at least 28,000 seats under the deal's definitive documents and would be owned by Hillsborough County (Tampa Bay Rays). The county's own release gives no dollar breakdown, so these are the team's numbers, not figures stated by the county (Hillsborough County).

The Community Investment Tax piece ties the ballpark to a tax whose current term ends this fall. Hillsborough County says the current half-cent CIT expires Nov. 30, 2026 and that voters renewed it through Dec. 31, 2041 (Hillsborough County). The same county page says that tax also paid for Raymond James Stadium, the Rays' would-be neighbor across Dale Mabry.

More agreements still need Hillsborough County approval, the county says, including a Ballpark License and Use Agreement, a Community Benefits Agreement and a Construction Funds Trust Agreement (Hillsborough County).

The Rays lay out the order from their side. The community benefits agreement must be finished before the bond validation process, and bond validation must take place before major demolition and construction can begin on the Dale Mabry campus (Tampa Bay Rays). The team also says Populous has nearly completed the ballpark's schematic design.

The date to watch is April 2029, which the county release gives as the Rays' anticipated ballpark opening (Hillsborough County). By the team's account, the Tropicana Field use agreement runs out after the 2028 season (Tampa Bay Rays). The team's release says that if everything goes according to plan, the Rays can start making plans for Opening Day 2029. Neither the county nor the city release reviewed for this page sets a groundbreaking date.

Last verified: October 18, 2026, against the Hillsborough County and City of Tampa releases of August 27 and 28, 2026, the county's Community Investment Tax page, the Tampa Sports Authority timeline and the Rays' own releases.