Lawmakers adjourn without passing bill to keep Bears in Illinois

Illinois lawmakers adjourned the 2026 spring legislative session early Monday morning without passing a bill aimed to keep the Chicago Bears from leaving the state.

At 11 p.m. Sunday, Illinois state Senator Bill Cunningham (D-Chicago) introduced new legislation that would allow Cook County cities with more than 70,000 residents (like Arlington Heights and Chicago) to create their own sports stadium authority. The Bears would pay for the construction of the new stadium, which the franchise has dedicated $2 billion in funding toward, and the land would be publicly owned.

The measure was introduced as another path toward solving the Bears' desire for property tax certainty. Under this proposal, the Bears would not be required to pay property taxes after paying to build the stadium but would have to pay property taxes on the rest of the development. Once the stadium is complete, the team would turn it over to a new municipal stadium authority, which would lease the building to the Bears.

After the "megaprojects bill," which would have given the Bears the ability to negotiate a payment in lieu of property taxes, died in the Senate on Saturday, lawmakers scrambled in the closing hours of the legislative session to pass additional legislation.

The proposed legislation was similar to what the state of Indiana passed months ago to entice the Bears to build their new domed stadium some 20 miles away from their current home of Soldier Field and thus play their home games outside of Illinois for the first time in the franchise's existence.

The Bears have repeatedly said that for them to build a new stadium, they need to have property tax certainty.

"In all these big projects, you have to have tax certainty, which is critically important," Bears team president and CEO Kevin Warren said April 1. "We would not be able to build a stadium without tax certainty. Fortunately we do have tax certainty in the state of Indiana, from that standpoint. There are no property-tax taxes for our stadium in the state of Indiana, so that is certain. That legislation has passed. But here in Illinois, for us to even consider an opportunity, we have to have tax certainty. Without that, we can't proceed forward."

The new bill passed the Illinois Senate 37-17 at 3:39 a.m. on Monday. The House adjourned after 4:30 a.m. without taking a vote.

Barring a special legislative session called by Illinois governor JB Pritzker, lawmakers won't return to Springfield until the fall veto session, which is slated for mid-to-late October.

The Bears say they still plan to follow the same timeline they have publicly committed to for months and soon decide between building their stadium in Arlington Heights, Illinois, where the team owns a 326-acre property on the former site of Arlington International Racecourse, or in Hammond, Indiana.

"We will finalize our evaluation of both Arlington Heights and Hammond, and remain on the late spring/early summer timeline that we have previously communicated," the team said in a statement. "We will provide an update when we have a decision to share."br/]