Minnesota Monsters Announce Where They’ll Play After Leaving Duluth

After one year of Minnesota Monsters football in Duluth, the team has formally announced a new home.

The Arena Football One (AF1) team that had called Duluth home for the 2026 season has undergone a lot of changes since making its original debut as the Duluth Harbor Monsters in 2024.

Besides new owners taking over, the move to a new league after the 2025 season, rebranding as the Minnesota Monsters as part of that move, and moving from the DECC Arena to AMSOIL Arena, a lot of changes happened this year.

The first of those significant changes was a mid-season shift in the front office, with the team's general manager, Meadow Lemon, shifting into a different role, while hiring a new general manager (Willie Howard) and assistant manager (his brother Jaysen "Yogi" Howard), who were both with the team in other capacities before being promoted.

The next of those changes was a shake-up of the coaching ranks after the end of the 2026 season. This shake-up would see a demotion of head coach Daron Clark to the role of offensive coordinator and assistant head coach, the departure of coach Tony O'Neil, and general manager Willie Howard taking over as head coach.

Later in the summer, it was revealed that the Minnesota Monsters would be departing Duluth, heading somewhere in the Twin Cities area. Many fans had feared that the team might leave Duluth when the name "Minnesota Monsters" was revealed, which ultimately ended up happening.

The biggest question after that news was the question as to where the Minnesota Monsters would play their games in the Twin Cities area.

That news was revealed today.

In a press release from the team, they revealed that they have partnered with the University of St. Thomas to make Lee & Penny Anderson Arena on the campus in St. Paul their home for the 2027 season.

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In that release, the team's owner, Jake Lambert, said, "Duluth will always be part of who we are", continuing, "But to grow this franchise the way it deserves, we needed to bring the Monsters to the Twin Cities".

Their new arena home on the St. Thomas campus is also a pretty new venue, opening in the fall of 2025.

Depending on configuration, the arena has a capacity of between 4,000 and 5,300 seats, which is more than a thousand seats smaller than AMSOIL Arena's hockey configuration seating capacity of 6,756, which is what was used for Monsters games during the 2026 season.

While the new venue for Minnesota Monsters football has been announced, the 2027 schedule and other details about the new season have not yet been revealed. The team says they plan to announce more in the coming weeks.