Dana White says UFC Freedom 250 will not be limited to the small crowd near the White House. The UFC CEO said the promotion plans to give away about 85,000 free tickets for fans to watch from the Ellipse, while the tighter White House seating setup will be aimed mostly at military members.
White laid out the plan during an interview with Lara Trump on Fox News. The event is scheduled for June 14 and is expected to feature major fights including Ilia Topuria vs. Justin Gaethje and Alex Pereira vs. Ciryl Gane. The actual arena will be small by UFC standards, but the surrounding fan event is built to be much larger.
Watch White’s interview below:
Dana White says there will be 4,300 people at the #UFCWhiteHouse event and most of them will be military.
Video also shows renderings of The Ellipse for the event. pic.twitter.com/1v7fB5IGQm
— Jed I. Goodman © (@jedigoodman) May 4, 2026
“My head of production, Craig Borsari, is the best in the business,” White said. “And it’s literally all he’s working on right now, 24-7. He’s been to the White House a million times. We’re already starting to move stuff in. We’ll start loading in, like really loading in a month before the show.”
“Literally, I just before I came out here had a ticket meeting,” White said. “So I’m meeting with the president. And he keeps telling me that he’s never had an event where people have asked him for more tickets. So I’m trying to figure out how to give him more tickets.”
Dana White Says Ellipse Tickets Will Be Free, But Fans Must Register
The smaller live crowd is not being treated like a normal UFC ticket sale. White said the White House-side seating number is 4,300, with most of those seats expected to go to service members. He tied that directly to the America 250 theme around the card.
“He wants this to be mostly for the military,” White said. “So there’s going to be 4,300 people there. I just literally went over it right now, 4,300 people. And most of them will be military.”
“100%,” White said when Lara Trump framed it as a thank-you. “I mean, this is America’s 250th birthday. This is the event.”
🚨| The UFC has unveiled official renderings of its setup at the Ellipse in Washington, D.C., where 85,000 fans will gather to watch a live screening of #UFCFreedom250 next month. 👀🔥
(via @FoxNews) #UFCWhiteHouse pic.twitter.com/yAzPVjejhU
— MMA Orbit (@mma_orbit) May 4, 2026
The public-facing piece is across the street at the Ellipse. The Ellipse, also known as President’s Park South, is a 52-acre public park south of the White House fence and north of Constitution Avenue and the National Mall. It is part of President’s Park and has hosted major public events for decades, including the National Christmas Tree tradition.
“Across the street is the Ellipse,” White said. “And for those who don’t know, the Ellipse is a massive park. That’s literally, you will be able to see the fight from the Ellipse. But we have screens, we got stages, we have music, we have activations over there.”
“If you are a fan of the UFC and especially, if you have never been to Washington D.C., we’re going to give away about 85,000 tickets,” White said. “And you have to, you know, there’s a process, you have to register for tickets, and they’re free.”
White also pushed the week as a full fan trip, not just a one-night watch party. That matters because the UFC has already built several White House-week stories around public-facing events, including arena construction plans and the broader D.C. setup.
“But you should come to Washington D.C. that week, the week of the fight,” White said. “We’re going to be doing all kinds of things, you know, in D.C. for fans. And it’s really a cool city for probably most people have never been. And if you’re a UFC fan, this is absolutely positively the time to come to D.C.”
White said the idea started directly with President Donald Trump during a fight event. From there, UFC officials built the plan and took it back for approval.
“We were at a fight and he leans over to me and he says, we should do a fight at the White House,” White said. “I was like, yes, yes, we should. And you know how he is. It’s like, if he says it, consider it done. It starts blowing me up the whole next week to get this thing rolling. And we went in and we pitched him on the plan and he loved everything that we pitched to him.”
Weather is still the main operational concern. White has already said the UFC White House card will push forward through rain, wind, or snow, but lightning is different. He repeated that point and said the UFC is using military weather support along with another company that handles concert-style forecasting.
“Outdoors is just way too unpredictable,” White said. “And we’ve gone over this, you know, if it rains, we’re going. If it snows, we’re going. The only thing that will stop us is lightning.”
“But we’re working with the military,” White said. “So the military knows the weather 10 days out. And they’ll notify us every two hours, 10 days out. Seven days out, they’ll notify us every hour. We also, there’s another company that does it for concerts and things like that. They’re very good, too.”
“So what could happen is the only thing that kills us is lightning,” White said. “So we could move the event two hours earlier, two hours after, you know. So these are all things that we’ll be playing with. The week of the event on top of all the other things that we’ll have going on. Which we never had to deal with.”
White pointed to UFC 112 as the one outdoor UFC event he previously agreed to. UFC 112 took place on April 10, 2010, at Concert Arena on Yas Island in Abu Dhabi. It was the UFC’s first event in the Middle East and the promotion’s first outdoor event in an open-air arena.
“The only time I’d ever agreed to do an outdoor event was in Abu Dhabi,” White said, “which I could be the weatherman in Abu Dhabi and I would be right every time.”
The Washington, D.C. plan adds several moving parts beyond a standard arena event. UFC Freedom 250 is set to combine limited White House seating, a large free Ellipse watch party, military-focused ticket allocation, outdoor production, and weather contingency planning during fight week.
