WrestleMania 36

WrestleMania 36 was a 2020 two-part professional wrestlingpay-per-view (PPV) and streamingevent produced by WWE, held for wrestlers from the promotion's Raw, SmackDown, and NXTbrand divisions. It was the 36th annual WrestleMania and was the first major professional wrestling event to be affected by the COVID-19 pandemic that began in mid-March. As a result of the pandemic, the event was filmed on March 25 and 26, 2020, at the WWE Performance Center in Orlando, Florida with no audience and was the first WrestleMania broadcast as a two-night event, airing on Saturday, April 4, and Sunday, April 5, 2020. 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 for Raw and SmackDown was relocated to the Performance Center training facility with no audience and only essential staff present due to the pandemic, which made WrestleMania 36 the only edition of WrestleMania to be held without a live crowd and to air on tape delay. 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, but to a limited venue capacity, with the next year's WrestleMania 37 moved to Raymond James Stadium, which adopted much of the buccaneer-themed marketing originally used for WrestleMania 36, including a similar logo. After WrestleMania 37 was held with a limited venue capacity, WWE resumed live touring with full capacity crowds that July.

The change to a two-night broadcast 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. This would also be the final WrestleMania to livestream on the American version of the WWE Network, which merged under Peacock in April 2021. This was also the first and only WrestleMania to promote the NXT brand, after it became recognized as one of WWE's three main brands in October 2019. Following WrestleMania 36, however, the NXT roster was largely kept separate from Raw and SmackDown's due to concerns over the pandemic with NXT's events held at Full Sail University in Winter Park, Florida. NXT then moved to the Performance Center in October, as Raw and SmackDown had moved to a bio-secure bubble called the WWE ThunderDome, before NXT reverted to being the company's developmental brand in September 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 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 ultimately Undertaker's final match. In the penultimate match, Braun Strowman defeated Goldberg to win SmackDown's Universal Championship. Strowman was a replacement for Roman Reigns, who pulled out of the event amid concerns surrounding the pandemic, and this would also be 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 threatladder match to retain the 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, Drew McIntyre defeated Brock Lesnar to win Raw's 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 first and only time that an NXT championship was defended at a WrestleMania.

The event was generally well-received by critics and fans, largely praised for its creativity in adapting to the pandemic. The Boneyard and Firefly Fun House matches 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 both the WWE Championship and Universal Championship matches for being too short and repetitive, and Edge vs. Orton for being too long.