{"id":843062,"date":"2026-08-04T09:31:28","date_gmt":"2026-08-04T09:31:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/843062\/"},"modified":"2026-08-04T09:31:28","modified_gmt":"2026-08-04T09:31:28","slug":"nrl-may-be-forced-to-move-2028-grand-final","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/843062\/","title":{"rendered":"NRL may be forced to move 2028 grand final"},"content":{"rendered":"

The NRL<\/a> have run into a problem over the 2028 NRL<\/a> Grand Final, with the relevation Pope Leo XIV will be in Sydney on the same weekend.<\/p>\n

It has been revealed that the Pope plans to be in Sydney on the October long weekend in 2028 by the Sydney Morning Herald, where he will hold a papal Mass.<\/p>\n

That will take place on the Sunday – the day before the long weekend public holiday which the NRL<\/a> typically stage the grand final on.<\/p>\n

While that event will likely – pending government sign off – take place at Royal Randwick, it’s believed there are concerns over policing of both events and Sydney’s transport system being able to cope with them being on the same day.<\/p>\n

400,000 people could be expected to attend the event at Randwick.<\/p>\n

It’s understood the NRL<\/a> and NSW State Government are in talks over the events, given the Mass has not yet been locked in.<\/p>\n

The NRL<\/a> have plenty of options on the table if it does go ahead though, with a decision expected in the coming months.<\/p>\n

Of note, the NRL<\/a> have not locked in their grand final venue beyond the end of 2027.<\/p>\n

Sydney almost lost the grand final a couple of years ago, and while a long-term contract wasn’t reinstated after the blow up in negotiations over stadium funding, a short-term deal left the door open for the NRL<\/a> to begin selling the grand final off to the highest bidder.<\/p>\n

Both Queensland and Victoria have been interested previously, while Western Australia<\/a>, South Australia<\/a> have held State of Origin<\/a> matches in recent years, with New Zealand<\/a> to also host one next year.<\/p>\n

The other option is to bring the start of the NRL<\/a> season forward by a week, but then the NRL<\/a> would lose the advantage of a public holiday following the Sunday evening kick-off time that is believed to be locked in moving forward with Channel Nine and the new TV deal.<\/p>\n

At this stage, it’s unclear how many rounds the 2027 and 2028 season are going to run for given the format of the competition will increase by a team in each of those years, which could naturally change the start and end dates.<\/p>\n

Given the NSW government and NSW Racing are also still locked in talks over the use of the venue, a decision could still be some way off, but the NRL<\/a> will spend the coming months working through contingency plans in case things do need to shuffle.<\/p>\n

The 2027 grand final will be played on the first Sunday in October at Homebush.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The NRL have run into a problem over the 2028 NRL Grand Final, with the relevation Pope Leo…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":216380,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[568],"tags":[64,63,761,762,158,85],"class_list":["post-843062","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nrl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-national-rugby-league","tag-nationalrugbyleague","tag-nrl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/843062","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=843062"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/843062\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/216380"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=843062"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=843062"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=843062"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}