WrestleMania 36

WrestleMania 36 was a 2020 professional wrestling pay-per-view (PPV) and livestreaming event produced by WWE. It was the 36th annual WrestleMania and was held for wrestlers from the promotion's Raw, SmackDown, and NXT brand divisions, the only for the latter. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the event was filmed on March 25 and 26, 2020, at the WWE Performance Center in Orlando, Florida and was broadcast as a two-night event on Saturday, April 4, and Sunday, April 5, 2020. This marked the first time WrestleMania was broadcast over two nights and on tape delay. This change to a two-night format became permanent, with the format also expanding to SummerSlam beginning with its 2025 installment. On pay-per-view, the two productions were sold as individual shows, with both available as a package deal. National Football League (NFL) player Rob Gronkowski served as the host of the event.

The event was originally scheduled to take place solely on April 5, 2020, at Raymond James Stadium in Tampa, Florida and was to air live. In mid-March, all WWE programming was relocated to the Performance Center training facility due to the COVID-19 pandemic, with no audience and only essential staff present. WrestleMania 36 was the first major professional wrestling event to be affected by the pandemic, and is in turn the only edition of WrestleMania not to feature a live crowd. Taking advantage of the format, two cinematic matches—a "Boneyard match" and a "Firefly Fun House match"—were filmed offsite in an atypical, cinematic style. In June, Florida lifted restrictions on paid spectator attendance at sporting events with the next year's WrestleMania 37 moved to Raymond James Stadium; WrestleMania 37 in turn adopted much of the buccaneer-themed marketing originally used for WrestleMania 36, including a similar logo. This would also be the final WrestleMania to livestream on the WWE Network in the United States as the American version of the service merged under Peacock in March 2021.

The card comprised 18 matches which were divided between the two nights, including one match on each night's Kickoff pre-show and a dark match on the second night. In the main event of the show for Part 1, The Undertaker, partly returning to his "American Bad Ass" character for the first time in over 16 years, defeated AJ Styles in a Boneyard match, which was later revealed to be Undertaker's final match, while in the final match from the Performance Center, which was SmackDown's main match, Braun Strowman defeated Goldberg to win the Universal Championship. Strowman was a replacement for Roman Reigns, who pulled out of the event amid concerns surrounding the pandemic. This was also Goldberg's last WrestleMania match before his retirement in 2025. In other prominent matches, Becky Lynch defeated Shayna Baszler to retain the Raw Women's Championship, John Morrison defeated Kofi Kingston and Jimmy Uso in a triple threat ladder match to retain the WWE SmackDown Tag Team Championship for himself and his absent partner, The Miz, and Kevin Owens defeated Seth Rollins in a No Disqualification match. In the main event for Part 2, which was the main match for Raw, Drew McIntyre defeated Brock Lesnar to win the WWE Championship, after which an impromptu dark match occurred in which McIntyre retained the title against Big Show, which was shown on the April 6 episode of Raw. In the penultimate match, "The Fiend" Bray Wyatt defeated John Cena in a Firefly Fun House match. In other prominent matches, Edge defeated Randy Orton in a Last Man Standing match, which was Edge's first singles match since April 2011, and in the opening bout, Charlotte Flair defeated Rhea Ripley to win the NXT Women's Championship for a second time, which was the only time that an NXT championship was defended at a WrestleMania to date.

The event was generally well-received by critics and fans, largely praised for its creativity in adapting to the pandemic. The main event of Part 1 and the Firefly Fun House match were met with high praise for their uniqueness and cinematic approach, while the SmackDown Tag Team Championship match, Owens vs. Rollins, and the NXT Women's Championship match also received favorable reviews. Criticism was directed mainly towards the main event of Part 2 and the Universal Championship match for being too short and repetitive, and Edge vs. Orton for being too long.

WrestleMania is WWE's flagship professional wrestling pay-per-view (PPV) and livestreaming event, having first been held in 1985. It was the company's first pay-per-view produced and was also WWE's first major event available via livestreaming when the company launched the WWE Network in February 2014. It is the longest-running professional wrestling event in history and is held annually between mid-March to mid-April. It was the first of WWE's original four pay-per-views, which includes Royal Rumble, SummerSlam, and Survivor Series, referred to as the "Big Four". WrestleMania is ranked the sixth most valuable sports brand in the world by Forbes, and has been described as the Super Bowl of sports entertainment. Much like the Super Bowl, cities bid for the right to host the year's edition of WrestleMania.

WrestleMania 36 was the fourth WrestleMania to be held in the state of Florida (after XXIV, XXVIII, and 33). The event featured wrestlers from the Raw and SmackDown brand divisions, as well as NXT—although some NXT wrestlers had appeared in WrestleMania's previously annual battles royal, this was the first WrestleMania to promote the brand, following NXT becoming one of WWE's three major brands in September 2019. National Football League (NFL) player Rob Gronkowski, who had recently signed with WWE, was announced as the host of WrestleMania 36. Gronkowski last appeared for WWE during the WrestleMania 33 Kickoff pre-show in 2017.

Parts 1 and 2 of WrestleMania 36 were sold as individual pay-per-views, with both available as a package deal. For the first time, WWE announced that it would also offer the PPV as a digital purchase in the United States via FITE TV and the Fox Sports app (as an extension of Fox's broadcasts of SmackDown). ESPN, which does not normally air WWE programming, aired encores of previous editions of WrestleMania during the lead-up to the event to replace the NCAA women's basketball tournament that had been scrapped. "Blinding Lights" by The Weeknd was the official theme song for the event.

Announced on March 7, 2019, the event was originally scheduled to take place at the Raymond James Stadium in Tampa, Florida solely on April 5, 2020, and was to air live. As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, other wrestling promotions began to cancel or postpone their shows in an attempt to prevent further spreading of the COVID-19 virus. This became true after the National Basketball Association (NBA) suspended its season after two of its players tested positive for COVID-19 which caused a massive ripple effect, effectively shutting down the vast majority of the sports world within five days. In speaking with the Tampa Bay Times regarding how this outbreak could affect WrestleMania 36, WWE's Chief Brand Officer Stephanie McMahon said of this "The health and safety of not only our fan base, but also our superstars, really does come first ... We don't want to put anyone in a bad situation ever, regardless of the circumstance. Those are not risks worth taking". WWE's Executive Vice President of Special Events John Saboor further noted that they were constantly monitoring global events. A meeting was held by Tampa officials on March 12 to determine the fate of WrestleMania 36; it was decided that the event would still proceed as planned, barring that the situation did not worsen in a week's time. Hillsborough County Commissioner Les Miller further stated that if the situation was not any better by the following week, they would "pull the plug" on WrestleMania 36 if WWE did not do it themselves. WWE then stated that they had a contingency plan ready in case the event was canceled.