EVERTON’S Hill Dickinson Stadium will host the 2026 Super League Magic Weekend on July 4-5 – but the deal is only for one year as things stand.

Following a successful second Ashes Test at the beginning of this month, when a sell-out 52,106 crowd flocked to the new stadium on the Mersey for England’s 14-4 defeat to Australia, Rugby League Commercial has acted fast to strike up another deal with the Premier League football side.

The Liverpool venue replaces St James’ Park despite Newcastle being a popular host among supporters.

RL Commercial’s managing director, Rhodri Jones, explained: “To be fair to both stadia, they offered up different solutions for us. The Newcastle stadium was only available on a certain day.

“The Everton stadium was available on a different day, and when we looked at it and off the back of the Ashes as well, we just felt like there was a good momentum around Everton.

“With the July date, we felt that that gave us the best opportunity to ‘put the magic back in magic’, as it’s been said before.

“We’re really, really pleased that we’ve been able to get it into a kind of standalone window, as opposed to shoehorning it in perhaps in that late April, early May period, where it’s already busy (with latter Challenge Cup rounds).”

Jones said a deal could be struck for longer than just one season, adding: “There’s certainly aspirations, from Everton’s perspective, to make the stadium a home of rugby league and they’re very interested to know what other opportunities there are going forward in the future.

“But I think to secure this for 2026 was the priority and then we can continue to work with them about what might come after that.

“We’ve added Everton to the roster of rugby league stadia, which I think is a positive thing.”

Along with St James’ Park, two other Premier League stadia were under consideration to host the event, as well as a return to its first home in Cardiff.

Jones said: “We had Newcastle, we had Everton, we had Nottingham (Forest’s City Ground) and Elland Road (in Leeds). Obviously we were very interested after the one we had there (at Elland Road in 2024).

“And we’ve had conversations with Cardiff (the Principality Stadium), probably more broadly with Cardiff and not necessarily around Magic, but just about the future of hosting events in Cardiff.”