Best Seats at Booth Kansas Memorial Stadium
The Booth is the oldest college football stadium west of the Mississippi, opened in 1921 as a living memorial to the KU students who died in World War I — the memorial is literally why the south end sat open to the hill for a century. For most of those hundred years it was a charming, creaky relic where the football rarely matched the setting.
Phase one of the rebuild changed that in 2025, and it cost just under $450 million on its own. One honest caveat before you book: you’re catching this place mid-transformation, and 2026 is the tightest year of it. Capacity is down to roughly 32,000 while the east and south sides are torn out and rebuilt, so the stadium you’ll walk into is a fraction of the old Booth and genuinely different from the finished one. Here’s how to pick a seat in a building that’s still becoming itself.
Seat Overview
The field runs north–south in a bowl, and for 2026 the thing separating a good seat from a bad one isn’t height, it’s which side you’re on. The west sideline and the north end are finished phase-one construction: seatbacks, cup holders, fans pulled closer and four feet higher off the field. The east side is a brand-new lower bowl with nothing built above it yet, running on temporary concessions and restrooms all season. The south end is a temporary grandstand holding the students and the Marching Jayhawks. That split drives every recommendation below.
KU Football Stadium Renovation: What’s Open in 2026
Phase 1 ran 2023–2025 and delivered the west sideline, the north end zone, a north-end conference center and a video board two and a half times the size of the old one. Phase 2 started with demolition of the east stands in December 2025 and runs through 2028.
For this season that means: a finished west and north, a new east lower bowl in sections 122–128 with no upper deck or permanent concourse above it, and a temporary south grandstand. The east upper bowl and rebuilt concourses are due before the 2027 season, when capacity returns to about 43,000. The Gateway District east of the stadium — hotel, restaurants, retail, offices, student housing, underground parking — is a 2028 completion. If someone tells you to grab a drink at the new development by the stadium, it doesn’t exist yet.
Best Non-Premium Seats
The west sideline, mid-stack, roughly the 40 to the 40. Best general-bowl seat in the building and it isn’t close — real seatbacks, cup holders, and about 50 percent more room per seat than the old aluminum benches. The catch is scarcity and price: the good west chairbacks carry a per-seat donation on top of the ticket, and with capacity cut to around 32,000 there aren’t many of them.
The north bowl, lower rows. The rebuilt north stand lost its old semicircular shape and was pulled much closer to the field, so the front rows put you right on top of an end zone with the same new seatbacks and the “K Flag” seat pattern behind you. You’re paying an end-zone price for phase-one construction, which is the whole argument for it.
The east lower bowl, sections 122–128. Newest seats in the place, opened for 2026, facing the handsome new west grandstand. The asterisk is the size of a crane: no permanent concourse above them until 2027, so you’re on temporary concessions and restrooms next to an active build.
Smart Money
The north bowl is the value play this year. You get the full phase-one build — seatbacks, legroom, proximity — at an end-zone price instead of a sideline one, and the sightline down the field is better than people expect because the new stand sits low and close to the goal line. For a first Booth visit in the new era it’s more stadium than you’re paying for.
Cheapest Way In
The back of the east lower bowl, 122–128. With capacity slashed there’s no true nosebleed section left to hide in, so the cheapest honest seat is toward the back of the open east bowl. You give up a finished concourse and you’re closest to the construction, but you’re inside the new Booth at the low end of the range.
The buy-down on the secondary market. For the lighter non-conference dates, resale prices for the new bowl routinely slide below face in the last 48 hours once sellers realize the building isn’t selling out. That doesn’t happen for the rivalry games — see the ticket section below.
Our Pick
Get a west-sideline chairback between roughly the 35s. It’s the comfortable seat and the one that actually shows off what the rebuild bought. If that’s gone or out of range, drop to a low north-bowl row and you’ve kept almost everything that matters.
Heat & Shade
The Booth is an open bowl with almost no overhang shade anywhere, and umbrellas are prohibited, so whatever the sky is doing, you’re in it. The early-season home dates have been Friday night kickoffs, which takes the September heat problem largely off the table; the rest of the home slate falls in October and November, when eastern Kansas turns cold and the wind comes whipping across through the stands.
Plan for layers rather than shade. For a rare warm afternoon kickoff, the west side faces east and puts the sun behind you, while the east lower bowl takes it full in the face.
What to Avoid (and What’s Worth Trying Once)
Sections 120 and 121 on the secondary market. This is the one that catches out-of-town buyers. Those two sections are student seating in 2026, along with the bleachers behind the south end zone, so a resale listing there puts you in a block that stands on bleachers for four hours. If you’re bringing parents or kids, buy elsewhere.
The east lower bowl for a long, marquee day. The seats are new and fine. The temporary restrooms and concession stands behind them are not, and on a sellout the waits are noticeably longer than the finished west concourse. If the day’s going to be long and you have the choice, pay up for west or north.
Worth it once: a spot on the Hill. Campanile Hill rises just beyond the south end, and the south end was left open for a century precisely so you could stand up there and look down into the bowl. The new south grandstand is closing that sightline for good, which makes this the last stretch of years you can see it the old way. Walk up before kickoff even if you have a ticket. I’ve done this many times back in the day, pleasant way to watch a game.
Premium Seating & Clubs
Premium at the Booth lives almost entirely on the new west and north sides for now, with a second, larger wave of east-side premium arriving when Phase 2 finishes in 2027. Phase 1 delivered roughly 2,300 club seats spread across three distinct club spaces, plus suites that were pushed about 80 feet closer to the field than the old setup. Lead with location, not the sponsor name on the door, because those naming deals change faster than the concrete.
The Best Premium Experience
The west-side club level. The signature premium play is the multi-tier club built into the west grandstand, the dressed-up heart of the whole renovation — interior lounge, upgraded food and drink, and the best sideline angle in the building with the afternoon sun at your back. It’s the option that exists because of this specific rebuild rather than a generic suite product, and demand for it ran well ahead of what the athletic department projected when they opened sales, which tells you what fans who’ve tried it think.
Best Value Premium
The loge boxes. If you want most of the club experience without a full suite commitment, the loge product is the call. You get a defined space with shared premium amenities and that same elevated, closer-to-the-field Phase 1 sightline, at a meaningful step down from a private suite — and crucially, you’re buying access to the social club spaces rather than just a fancier chair. For a group that wants to feel taken care of without booking a whole suite, this is the over-delivering pick, and it’s the one a season-ticket regular would quietly steer you toward.
Other Premium Options
The west and north premium tiers also include traditional club seats with lounge access for fans who want comfort and in-house food without a box, and suites for groups that want a private room. When Phase 2 opens the east side for 2027, KU has said five different premium products — a mix of loge boxes and club seats — will come online over there, so anything you’re told about “the new premium” may be describing a thing that doesn’t physically exist yet. For 2026, assume premium means the west and north sides.
Suites & Group Options
Private suites at the Booth are largely held by major donors through the per-seat-donation and Williams Education Fund priority system, which is the polite way of saying the best ones are spoken for. Single-game suite and group inventory does surface through the athletic department’s premium sales team and resale partners, generally for groups in the 10-to-20 range with catering handled separately. If you’re organizing something, start with the Kansas Athletics ticket office rather than hunting piecemeal.
KU Football Seating Chart and Capacity
The Booth holds about 32,000 for the 2026 season. That’s a construction-year number and it’s less than two-thirds of what this stadium used to hold, so any “47,000 seats” figure you find online is describing the pre-2024 building and is wrong for your visit. Phase 1 reopened in 2025 at 41,525; full capacity of roughly 43,000 returns for the 2027 season. The all-time attendance record here is 52,530.
One quirk worth knowing before you read a chart: the east side is the only place the 100-level numbering matters this year, running 120 through 128, and the split inside that run is not marked. Sections 122–128 are general seating; 120 and 121 are students. Check the current Kansas football seating chart before you buy, because the map has changed twice in three seasons.
Check out the current Kansas Football Seating Chart. This is the latest i could find, just keep in mind with the current construction situation this could be outdated.
Getting the Best Tickets
Kansas tickets behave differently than they used to, because the team has improved and the building got smaller at the same time. With single-game inventory deliberately thin during construction, a season package or mini-plan is the only guaranteed way into the high-demand dates. The demand split is stark: the Border Showdown against Missouri prices like a postseason game and is the hottest ticket of any year it lands in Lawrence, while the non-conference dates sag and reward waiting. For anything that matters, the secondary market is where most out-of-town fans will actually find two seats together, so compare the all-in price before you commit
For the games that matter, the secondary market is where most out-of-town fans will actually find a pair together; it’s worth comparing the all-in price on the resale exchanges before you commit. Find KU Football or Basketball Tickets with VIvid Seats
KU Memorial Stadium Bag Policy
Kansas Athletics runs a clear-bag policy across all its venues. Bags must be clear plastic, vinyl or PVC and no larger than 12″ x 6″ x 12“, one per person, with any logo on one side only. You may also carry one small clutch, non-clear is fine, up to 5.5″ x 8.5”.
KU’s prohibited list is stricter than most of its peers, and this is where visitors get caught. Clear backpacks are not allowed. Neither are diaper bags, mesh bags, tinted totes, fanny packs, or camera and binocular cases — the camera itself is fine, the case is not. Chairbacks are prohibited outright, which matters if you’re sitting on the temporary east or south bleachers and were planning to bring a seat back. Also banned: umbrellas, strollers, outside food, video cameras, noisemakers and poles or sticks of any kind. There’s no bag check on site, so a rejected bag means a walk back to the car.
Key Venue Policies
No water bottles, sealed or empty. This is the single most-missed rule at the Booth. Plenty of schools carve out an exception for one factory-sealed bottle or an empty refillable — KU does not. Containers, bottles, cans and liquid containers are all on the prohibited list with no exception, so plan to buy water inside and don’t turn up at the gate holding one.
No re-entry, none. KU adopted a hard no-re-entry policy when it started selling beer and wine, and it’s enforced. If you duck out at halftime to hit your tailgate on the Hill for a cheaper drink, you are not getting back in. Alcohol sales inside stop at the end of the third quarter.
Mobile tickets and cards only. There is no paper ticket — load yours into your phone’s wallet before you leave the hotel, because signal in a packed bowl is not your friend. Concessions and the team store run on card and contactless, and on the temporary east-side stands cash is even less reliable.
Accessibility. The rebuild markedly improved accessible seating and routes, but that improvement lives on the finished west and north sides. Accessible parking is in Lot 59 and the Mississippi Street Garage, plus Lots 54 and 72 near the game shuttle, all sold first-come by credit card. If anyone in your group needs accessible seating, call the ticket office at 785-864-3141 and ask for the phase-one side specifically rather than booking blind.
Here is the current KU policy page.
Getting to David Booth Kansas Memorial Stadium
The Booth sits at 11th and Mississippi on the north edge of campus, a short walk from downtown — which is why the smartest move for most visitors is to not drive to the stadium at all.
The Downtown Move: Park Free, Ride the Bus
This is the local’s play. On game days the city opens free parking in the Riverfront Parking Garage (lower level and ramp) and the top level of the Vermont Street garage, and Lawrence Transit’s Route 4 runs fare-free to the stadium and back. Everyone boards at one downtown stop, the 700 block of Vermont Street across from the public library — look for the KU-branded buses. Service starts about two hours before kickoff and runs for roughly 90 minutes afterward, with no mid-game service. You park for nothing, eat and drink downtown on both ends, and skip the postgame lot crawl entirely. Check Lawrence Transit for the current schedule; the format gets tweaked most seasons.
Rideshare
Uber and Lyft work fine in Lawrence, but it’s a small market, so surge after a Saturday afternoon game is real and cars thin out fast when 35,000 people leave at once. Have the driver drop you near the top of the hill on Memorial Drive south of the stadium, or at the HERE complex on 11th, both of which keep you out of the worst gridlock. For pickup, walk a few blocks toward downtown before you request — you’ll get a car faster and cheaper away from the stadium scrum.
KU Memorial Stadium Parking
If you do drive, know that the renovation and Phase 2 construction have scrambled the old parking map, and a new surface lot at 11th and Missouri came online for 2026 to help. Public game-day parking is genuinely tight near the stadium now, so the free shuttle lots — including Lot 90, the only place RVs are allowed — combined with the campus game shuttle that runs from around Lot 54 on Irving Hill Road and the Allen Fieldhouse garage area are your realistic options. The shuttle starts about three hours before kickoff.
One housekeeping note: KU moved its paid hourly parking to the HONK app in early 2026, so if you’re feeding a campus meter, download that ahead of time. Honestly, between the free downtown garages and the bus, paying to park near the Booth is the option I’d choose last.
KU Memorial Stadium Insider Tips & Hacks
Lawrence has always known how to do a gameday — basketball fans figured that out decades ago, and the football crowd is only now catching up. The stadium is half-new, the town is unchanged, and most of the good stuff happens outside the gates. Here’s what to know on the ground.
The Renovation and the Man Whose Name Is on It
Go in knowing you’re seeing a half-finished stadium. That’s a feature if you expect it and a disappointment if you don’t. West and north are gleaming and done; east and south are a lower bowl and a temporary grandstand with cranes behind them.
What it becomes matters for when you book. By 2027 the east side gets a full upper bowl and rebuilt concourses, closing the century-old horseshoe into a true 360-degree bowl for the first time — which should sharpen the home-field edge, because an enclosed bowl traps crowd noise the open south end never could.
The Gateway District is the part that reshapes the whole trip. Rising east of the stadium for 2028: a full-service hotel, restaurants, retail, offices, student housing and an underground garage. The two biggest headaches of a Booth visit today, tight parking and nowhere to walk for a meal, largely vanish with it.
David Booth’s name on the building isn’t a naming-rights deal. He grew up in Lawrence on Naismith Drive near Allen Fieldhouse, worked as a stadium usher at 13, and went on to found Dimensional Fund Advisors. He’s also the reason Naismith’s original 1891 rules of basketball live in the DeBruce Center — he bought them at auction in 2010 and gave them to KU.
His money is why the cranes will finish the job. A $50 million gift in 2017 kicked off the rebuild and the stadium took his name in 2018; a further $300 million in 2025 is believed to be among the largest gifts in the history of college athletics, with $75 million aimed squarely at accelerating Phase 2. In an era when programs are scrambling to fund rosters, KU has a backstop most schools would envy.
Working the Hill
Get to the top of Campanile Hill about two hours before kickoff for the Hawk Walk. The team arrives at the top of the hill and walks down to the locker room while fans line the path. It’s the best free, distinctly-KU moment of the day, and most out-of-towners miss it because they’re still setting up a tailgate.
Follow the drumline to the band’s warmup before they march. The Marching Jayhawks hold a loud, brassy pregame near Murphy Hall, the music building, before they head down the Hill — a mini-concert the diehards know about and nobody writes down.
Land on the Hill if you don’t have a tailgate of your own. Campanile Hill south of the stadium is the center of gravity, with the official tailgate, food, local beer and music starting about three hours out. Gameday Boulevard on 11th Street, closed from Maine to Illinois, adds a second open fan zone. Either is an easy place to plug in cold.
Keep the drinking inside the designated tailgate areas. Alcohol is fine in the marked tailgate zones and nowhere else on campus or on the street, and kegs and bulk containers aren’t permitted. Lawrence is an open-container college town only where the signs say so.
Getting In Without Losing the Afternoon
Sort your bag before you leave the car, not at the gate. There’s no bag check at the Booth, so anything that fails the clear-bag rule means a full round trip. The list of things people are surprised by is long: clear backpacks, diaper bags, camera cases, chairbacks and any water bottle at all.
Pack a gallon Ziploc inside your clear bag. Umbrellas are prohibited and the bowl is fully open, so a sudden Kansas downpour leaves you exposed. A spare Ziploc costs nothing and seals your phone and wallet away dry when the sky opens.
Decide before kickoff whether you’re staying. The no-re-entry rule is absolute, and the classic mistake is walking out at half to top up at the tailgate. Hit the restroom, get your food, and settle in.
Merch and the Team Store
Buy your gear before you get to the stadium. With the east side on temporary concourses, the in-stadium merch lines are tight and slow, and you’ll burn the discounted concessions window standing in one.
The official team store is Rally House inside Allen Fieldhouse, at 1651 Naismith Drive, and the selection is far deeper than anything in the stadium. It sits right by the Allen Fieldhouse garage and Lot 90 shuttle stops, so it’s on your way in if you’re parking cheap. Downtown, the Mass Street location at 921 Massachusetts is the other good option.
Food, Dessert, and the Late-Night Game
Eat during Concessions Happy Hour. From 90 minutes to 30 minutes before kickoff the Booth discounts staples like hot dogs, popcorn, nachos and pretzels. If you’re early and hungry, eat then instead of paying full freight at halftime.
Be selective inside and save the real eating for downtown. The renovated concourses brought variety, but quality swings noticeably stand to stand. Lines move fast, which is the actual win.
The postgame move is ice cream at Sylas & Maddy’s on Mass Street. Homemade, packed after every game, and worth the wait even in November. It’s the dessert tradition most visitor guides skip entirely.
Hit the Wheel before the game, not after. The Wang Burger is only served during the day, roughly 11 to 2, and the postgame line to get in wraps around the block. Pregame is the smarter play at KU’s most famous bar.
Escape the Free State crush at Lawrence Beer Co. Free State Brewing goes wall-to-wall on game days. Same caliber of local beer and food with room to breathe, just east of downtown in the Warehouse Arts District.
When the bars close, order Pizza Shuttle. If you shut down the Triangle or Mass Street, skip the sit-down spots — cream-cheese pizza and all, it’s the undisputed champion of cheap late-night Lawrence survival food.
For real espresso, skip the bakery line. Wheatfields is great for breakfast, but 1900 Barker, tucked into a residential neighborhood, and La Prima Tazza downtown on Mass Street are the two best cups in town.
Campus Lore and Quiet Corners
Don’t walk through the center of the Campanile. You’ll see fans milling around the World War II Memorial Campanile, but you won’t catch current students walking through its center arches — campus superstition says passing through before your graduation day means you won’t graduate in four years.
Take a lap around Potter Lake. Just southeast of the stadium, it’s a quiet campus retreat and the legendary final resting place of the goalposts students tore down and marched into the water after the program’s biggest upsets.
Duck into Dyche Hall when the weather turns. It houses the KU Natural History Museum and its massive historic panorama of North American wildlife, free with a suggested donation — a climate-controlled bailout ten minutes from the stadium when it’s 95 in September or 30 in November.
The Shot
Climb Campanile Hill above the south end and shoot down into the bowl. You get the stadium with downtown Lawrence and the river behind it, best in golden hour. Get it while you can — the new south grandstand is closing this angle permanently.
The other one is the WWI Memorial and the rows of honored names. This is a memorial stadium first, and that’s easy to forget in the noise.
Traditions Worth Knowing
Wave the Wheat after every Kansas touchdown — both arms up, swaying side to side like a wheat field in the wind. Easiest one to join and nobody will care that you’re new.
Learn the Rock Chalk Chant before you need it. The eerie, drawn-out one that rolls through the crowd when a win is in hand traces to the limestone — chalk rock — of Mount Oread, the hill the campus sits on. It sounds like nothing else in sports.
The Marching Jayhawks play from the stands all game, not just at halftime. In 2026 they’re in the new south grandstand alongside the students, which puts the sound behind one end zone rather than on a sideline.
The Border Showdown
Treat the Missouri game as a different animal entirely. The rivalry has been played more than 120 times going back to 1891, went dormant for 14 years when Missouri left for the SEC, and only returned in 2025. The 2026 meeting is the first in Lawrence since 2005.
Buy the week the schedule drops, not the week of the game. This is the one date at the Booth that prices like a postseason game, and in a reduced-capacity year there is no late buy-down on it. Everything in this guide about waiting for resale to sag applies to the other games, not this one.
Families and Kids
Start on the practice fields by the Hill. The kids’ zone there opens about three hours before kickoff with inflatables, lawn games and activities, and it’s the easiest place to park a family pregame.
Sit on the west or north side with small children. Those are the finished concourses with real restrooms and stroller room, and the new seatbacks make a long game far more survivable than the old benches. Steer clear of the temporary east-side facilities with little kids this season.
Note that strollers are prohibited inside the stadium. Plan to carry, and remember there’s no bag check to leave anything in.
Autographs and Player Access
The Hawk Walk is your window. Players are accessible and relaxed coming down the Hill before they vanish into the locker room — two hours out, top of Campanile Hill.
After that, try the pregame warmup near the field-level seats on the west side. Lower your expectations for postgame; the new locker-room flow keeps players out of reach.
Things to Do in Town
Lawrence over-delivers for a city its size. On campus, the Spencer Museum of Art and the Dole Institute of Politics are both free and excellent, and the campus itself — built up the slope of Mount Oread — is one of the prettier walks in the Big 12, worth an hour even if you’re not a museum person. Downtown, Massachusetts Street (“Mass Street”) is six blocks of independent shops, restaurants, and street life that put most college-town main drags to shame.
Allen Fieldhouse: A Quick Overview
Let’s be straight about something: Kansas is a basketball school that happens to play football, and if you’re making the trip to Lawrence, you should build it around getting inside Allen Fieldhouse if you possibly can. This isn’t homer talk — the Phog is, by broad consensus, one of the two or three best places in America to watch the sport, and it has the Guinness record (130.4 decibels, set against West Virginia in 2017) to back up the noise.
It opened in 1955, it’s named for Phog Allen, the floor is named for James Naismith — the man who invented basketball and coached KU first — and four NCAA championship banners hang over a court inside a limestone building that smells like history. The “Pay Heed, All Who Enter: Beware of the Phog” banner over the north end is not marketing; the place really is that hard to play in.
Getting in is the catch. KU has sold out the building for the better part of two decades — the streak runs into the hundreds of consecutive games — and students camp out for the big ones, so there’s no walking up to a marquee men’s game.
For a visitor, the realistic routes are the secondary market for men’s games (expect to pay up for ranked opponents and rivalry dates), or — and this is the underrated move — a women’s basketball game or an exhibition, which get you inside the same cathedral for a fraction of the price and a fraction of the hassle. If your timing lines up in October, Late Night in the Phog is the free-ish season kickoff event and a fantastic first taste of the building’s energy.
The one ticket hack worth planning around: target a non-conference home game in November or December. Before Big 12 play starts, KU schedules a run of lower-profile non-conference opponents, and seats to those games are dramatically cheaper and easier to find than a ranked league date — yet you get the identical building, the same Rock Chalk chant, the same band, and very likely a comfortable Kansas win. It’s the same Phog at a fraction of the price, and it’s how a savvy out-of-towner actually gets in. Whichever game you land, get there early for warmups, because the pregame in here is part of the show. Check Allen Fieldhouse ticket inventory on Vivid Seats
The free part. Even if you can’t get into a game, two adjoining spaces are open to the public at no charge and are worth the walk: the Booth Family Hall of Athletics, a genuinely good museum of KU sports history, and the DeBruce Center, which houses the actual original document on which Naismith wrote the 13 rules of basketball — the founding text of the sport, saved from a Duke booster at auction by the same Booth family the stadium is named for. There’s a café in there too. For a basketball fan, standing in front of those rules is reason enough to come to Lawrence.
Where to Stay in Lawrence
Lawrence is a small city with a big game-day appetite, so the rooms that exist book up fast and price up faster: expect home-football weekends to run 50 to 75 percent over normal rates with two-night minimums common, and book four to twelve weeks out for anything but the softest non-conference date. The thing to optimize for is walkability to downtown and campus, because that’s where the weekend actually happens.
Best Areas to Stay
Downtown / Mass Street is the move for most visitors. You’re within a 10-to-15-minute walk of the bars and restaurants, you can catch the free Route 4 bus to the stadium, and you never need to move your car. The campus edge near the stadium (the Oread area) puts you closest to the Booth and the Hill and suits fans who want to roll out of bed and walk to the gate. The south and west chain corridor along Iowa Street and 6th Street is cheaper and car-dependent — fine if downtown is sold out or your budget’s tight, but you’ll be driving in.
Hotel Recommendations
The Limestone Landmark — The Oread. The Oread (a Tapestry Collection by Hilton) is the location splurge: a limestone tower one block from the stadium and a half-mile from downtown, with a rooftop bar that looks down over the Booth and campus. On a game weekend, being able to walk to both the stadium and Mass Street from a real hotel bar is worth the premium, and the rooftop view is the best in town. Top tier; book early.
The Historic One — The Eldridge. The Eldridge Hotel sits right on Mass Street downtown, a genuine 19th-century landmark with a fine-dining restaurant (Ten) on site. You’re in the middle of the bar-and-restaurant action, walkable to everything, with more character than any chain in town. Upper-mid tier, and the pick if you want downtown-historic over campus-modern.
The Walkable Suites — TownePlace & SpringHill Suites Downtown. Both Marriott downtown properties put you within easy walking distance of Mass Street and the free game bus, with suite layouts and breakfast that suit families or longer stays. Solid mid-tier value, and the practical choice if the Oread and Eldridge are booked or over budget.
The Reliable Chains — DoubleTree, Hampton Inn, Holiday Inn Express, StoneHill, Tru. Cluster on the south/west side a couple of miles out, all car-dependent, all dependable. The DoubleTree is the most full-service of the bunch. Pick these for predictability and a lower rate, knowing you’re trading walkability for it.
One more for the future: a full-service hotel is part of the Gateway District being built east of the stadium, so by 2028 there’ll be a walk-to-the-gate option that doesn’t exist yet. For 2026 and 2027, it’s still under construction.
Budget Options
Country Inn & Suites and Comfort Inn & Suites, University Area. Both sit in the cheaper university-area cluster with free breakfast and clean, no-frills rooms, and both routinely come in well under the downtown rates. The honest tradeoff is location: you’re a drive or a longer bus ride from the action, and on a game weekend even these climb, so book them the moment your trip firms up.
Gameday Scene
KU game day runs on two engines: the Hill by the stadium, and Mass Street downtown. The Hill is the tailgate; downtown is where the day starts early and ends late, in bars that have been soaking up Jayhawk wins and losses for generations. You don’t even need a ticket to have a great Saturday here — the downtown sports bars fill with fans either way.
Best Pregame & Postgame Bars
The Wheel (Wagon Wheel) is the one to hit, full stop — KU’s most famous bar, just down the hill from campus, with decades of fans’ signatures scrawled on the walls and the legendary Wang Burger. Time it right: the burger is only served during the day (roughly 11 to 2), pizza comes after 5, and on a game day you’ll want to get there early for a seat. It’s the closest thing KU has to a required pilgrimage, and it earns the reputation. This is always my favorite spot in Lawrence.
The Triangle — Wheel, Bull, and Hawk. The three classic college bars form a literal triangle just off Jayhawk Boulevard. The Hawk (Jayhawk Cafe) skews young and student-heavy; Bullwinkle’s (the Bull) is the rowdy middle; the Wheel anchors it. Bar-hop the three if you want the unfiltered college experience — go in knowing it’s chaos, in the good way.
Johnny’s Tavern has been a Lawrence institution since the 1950s, famous for its burgers and an official KU alumni watch-party spot; the North location (the original, just over the river) is the one with the history, the West location is the roomier game-watch setup.
Jefferson’s on Mass Street is the quintessential dollar-bills-on-the-walls college sports bar — wings, a great location, and the kind of place where the game is always on and the specials are cheap.
Free State Brewing Co. on Mass Street is the grown-up option: Kansas’s first legal brewery in over a century, with house beers and real food, and a good landing spot if the Triangle isn’t your speed.
Best Restaurants in the Area
715 is the upscale dinner downtown — the Mass Street spot for a proper meal the night before the game, seasonal and a notch above the bar food. The Burger Stand at the Casbah does gourmet burgers and hand-cut fries that regularly get ranked the best in town, worth the wait. Papa Keno’s slings enormous New York-style pizza slices on Mass Street, ideal for a fast, cheap, satisfying pregame feed. Wheatfields is a beloved bakery for a morning-of pastry and coffee before you head up the Hill.
And if you’ve got the time and a car, treat yourself to the drive to Kansas City barbecue — Joe’s KC, Q39, Jack Stack, or the originals at Gates and Bryant’s — because there’s no true destination BBQ in Lawrence itself and KC’s is among the best in the country, 40 minutes away.
Why You Should Go
The honest pitch for the Booth in 2026 isn’t that it’s a finished masterpiece — it isn’t, not yet. It’s that you’d be catching one of the oldest stadiums in the country at the exact moment it’s being reborn, in a college town that is one of the best kept secrets in the midwest the whole time the football team was bad.
You get a brand-new west grandstand, the Hill and its hundred years of tradition, downtown Lawrence and Mass Street, and — if you plan it right — a chance to step inside Allen Fieldhouse, which on its own is worth a flight. Come now and you’ll have seen the Booth mid-transformation; come in 2028 and you’ll have seen the finished thing. Either way, the part that’s always been great — the town, the Hill, the Phog — is waiting. Rock Chalk!
Explore all of our College Football guides here, as well as these regional gems:
K-State and Mizzou are the best games to go too.
Kauffman Stadium and Arrowhead Stadium
Written by Brad Richards. Founder of Gameday Guides. This guide includes insights from personal visits as well as updated info from team sources, fan forums, and stadium policies. We aim to help you plan with confidence — enjoy your gameday. If you have any tips, if we missed anything or you have a question, don’t hesitate to shoot us an email.