WrestleMania 42: Las Vegas Two-Night Spectacle Begins

The lights at Allegiant Stadium in Paradise, Nevada, dim at 6 p.m. Eastern on Saturday 18 April 2026, and for the forty-second time in its history, WrestleMania begins. Seventy thousand seats. Thirteen announced matches across two nights. John Cena — who never quite seems to leave — hosting the event in his first major WWE appearance of the year.

WrestleMania 42 returns WWE to Las Vegas, a city that hosted the promotion twice before and delivers the television spectacle that the company's merger with Netflix's international subscriber base demands. The event airs on ESPN domestically and Netflix for international audiences, a distribution split that reflects how WWE's media rights landscape has shifted since the company's merger with UFC under TKO Group Holdings.

Night 1 headlines with Randy Orton challenging Cody Rhodes for the Undisputed WWE Championship. Orton, now 46 years old and in his 25th year with the company, has reinvented his character at least twice in the last decade. His championship challenge against Rhodes is built on months of slow-burn storytelling. Rhodes won the title in a match that defined last year's WrestleMania and has been defending against increasingly credible challengers since. Orton, for all his experience, has not held the top title since 2013.

“Night 1 headlines with Randy Orton challenging Cody Rhodes for the Undisputed WWE Championship.”

Night 2 closes with a match that has been gestating for two years. CM Punk versus Roman Reigns for the World Heavyweight Championship. Punk's return to WWE in late 2023, followed by his injury-interrupted 2024 and a methodical 2025 rebuild, positions this as the culmination of a years-long investment in a feud the company originally had to postpone. Reigns, who spent nearly four years as the company's dominant villain before turning face, is playing a character whose moral alignment is now genuinely ambiguous — a rarity in a medium that typically prefers clean categories.

The undercard carries its own storylines. Stephanie Vaquer, the women's world champion, defends against Royal Rumble 2026 winner Liv Morgan — a match that, on paper, pits the current title holder against the woman who earned her shot by winning the sport's marquee annual event. Brock Lesnar faces Oba Femi in a generational clash designed to test whether Femi, the rising star of WWE's NXT brand, can carry a legitimate main-roster match against one of the company's most experienced in-ring workers. Logan Paul, Austin Theory, and internet personality IShowSpeed face The Usos and LA Knight in the crossover booking that defines WWE's ongoing effort to convert social media audiences into pay-per-view and streaming viewers.

There is a reasonable counter-narrative available. WrestleMania has staged more nights of television than any single sporting event in American history and has perfected the art of emotional manipulation to a degree that occasionally outruns its actual in-ring product. The Punk-Reigns match, in particular, is carrying expectations that no 25-minute wrestling match can fully satisfy. "The story has been brilliant," wrote Dave Meltzer of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter in his April 18 preview, "but WrestleMania main events succeed on delivery, not build."

What the event has undeniably achieved is economic dominance. WrestleMania 42's impact on the Las Vegas hospitality economy is projected by the Nevada Gaming Control Board to exceed $200 million over the weekend, based on comparable figures from WrestleMania 39 in 2023 and WrestleMania 41 in 2025 when the event last visited Las Vegas. Hotel occupancy in the vicinity of Allegiant Stadium is at 98 percent for the weekend, according to data published by the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority on 16 April 2026.

Night 1 begins at 6 p.m. Eastern, preceded by a kickoff show at 4 p.m. Eastern. Night 2 follows the same schedule Sunday. For viewers overseas, Netflix is streaming both nights in regions where WWE's new international distribution agreement is active.