Prudential Center Bag Policy, Paid Lockers and a Missing Inch

The published bag limit at Prudential Center is 12 by 14 inches, two dimensions where the four other large venues in the New York area publish three. Depth is the number missing from the entry policy page, so a flat tote and a thick duffel with the same face carry the same written permission. What follows is what the Newark arena publishes about bags, where its own pages disagree, and what a refused bag costs once you are already at the door.

Newark writes its bag limit as a rectangle and not as a box

Prudential Center permits bags up to 12 by 14 inches and refuses backpacks at any size, checked September 2026. Depth is absent from the entry policy page, so a flat tote and a thick duffel with the same face hold the same written permission, and a hard sided bag fails at any size.

Three clauses carry the whole rule. Bags up to 12 by 14 inches go in. Bags over that measurement do not, with the exception of childcare or medical bags, and those permissible larger bags will be X-rayed. Backpacks of all sizes are refused whatever they measure, which puts the Newark arena beside UBS Arena and a long way from Madison Square Garden, where the word backpack appears on no page at all.

What Prudential Center publishes	The published wording	Where it appears
Maximum bag	Bags up to 12 by 14 inches	Entry policy page and A-Z Guide
The same limit, restated	Bags up to 12 by 12 by 14 inches	Arena safety page
Backpacks	Not permitted at any size	Entry policy, A-Z Guide and prohibited items
Hard sided bags	Prohibited at any size	Prohibited items list
Clear bag requirement	None published	Absent from every Prudential Center page checked
A bag that fails	Back to the vehicle, or a locker at the guest’s expense	Entry policy page
Locker price	$8 to $10 per locker	A-Z Guide, storage lockers entry
Exceptions	Childcare or medical bags, X-rayed, admitted size unpublished	Entry policy and prohibited items
Re-entry	No re-entry, with exceptions such as a medical necessity	A-Z Guide

Prefer to drive on your own schedule? You can rent a car for the trip instead of a transfer.

The depth figure that survives on exactly one prucenter.com page

Prudential Center states the same rule twice in different shapes. The entry policy page and the A-Z Guide both read that bags up to 12 by 14 inches are permitted inside the arena. The safety page states it as bags up to 12 by 12 by 14 inches, checked September 2026.

One number therefore exists in one place. Whoever reads the entry page has a rectangle to measure against, and whoever reads the safety page has a box. Those are not interchangeable, because 12 by 12 by 14 puts a 12 inch ceiling on the depth the entry page leaves open, and a soft weekender that clears the rectangle can still fail the box.

The prohibited items list on the arena policy page sides with the shorter version and then closes part of the gap by material rather than by inches. It refuses bags or purses over 12 by 14 inches in size, and separately refuses hard sided bags of any size. Depth stays unbounded for a soft bag and irrelevant for a rigid one. No neighbour leaves that hole: UBS Arena states all three numbers as 12 by 12 by 6 inches across four of its own pages.

One A-Z Guide entry permits a bag and another refuses every bag

Both statements sit in the same A-Z Guide. Under Bag Policy it reads that bags up to 12 by 14 inches are permitted inside Prudential Center. Under Security Screening, further down the same page, it reads that bags are not permitted in Prudential Center at this time, checked September 2026.

That second entry sends readers to prucenter.com/safety for details on exceptions for medical and childcare needs, which is the page carrying the three number version of the limit. Taken in sequence, one guide permits a bag, forbids every bag, and then refers the reader to a third page for a different measurement of the bag it has just forbidden.

Only one reading is enforced at the door, and the entry policy page is the one the arena links from its own Entry Policy navigation. Treat 12 by 14 inches as the working number, keep the bag soft, and the contradiction never gets tested. Arriving with a rigid case measured to 12 by 12 by 14 inches means taking the most generous reading of all three pages and losing anyway on material.

Two of the four main Prudential Center doors have a locker outside

Four main entrances are listed by name, checked September 2026. The Citizens Tower sits on the northeast corner at Mulberry Street and Edison Place, the M&M’s Tower on the southeast corner at Mulberry Street and Lafayette Street, the Lafayette Street Entrance on the south side, and the Hyundai Skybridge crosses from Level 4 of the Hyundai Parking Deck.

Lockers are published at two of them, outside the M&M’s Tower and the Lafayette Street entrances. The same pair appears, according to the Prudential Center A-Z Guide, as the M&M’s Tower and Lafayette Lobby Entrance at 25 Lafayette Street. Neither is the door the arena points train arrivals toward: to exit toward Newark Penn Station, which the guide places a short two blocks east of the building, guests are sent to the Citizens Tower on the northeast corner.

The consequence is unglamorous and worth having in advance. Someone walking in from Newark Penn Station meets the corner with no locker first, and the locker bank is at the far pair of doors. Anyone carrying a bag they are unsure about should aim for the M&M’s Tower or the Lafayette Street entrance from the start, because circling the block after a refusal spends the margin the doors bought. Reaching that corner from Manhattan or Westchester is its own problem, set out in our guide to reaching every New York area stadium and arena.

Only Newark charges for the shelf that holds a refused bag

A price is published for the service. Storage lockers range in price from $8 to $10, sit outside the two named entrances, and take prohibited bags after a security screening, checked September 2026. Stored items must be collected at the end of the event.

That is the only published charge for leaving a bag behind at a large venue in the region, and one of only three places to leave it at all. MetLife Stadium charges $5 per item at non NFL events and nothing at NFL games. UBS Arena publishes a bag check in the Acrisure Great Hall with no price attached. The remaining three publish no service to price.

Venue	Published bag limit	Where a refused bag can go	Published price
Prudential Center, Newark	12 by 14 inches on the entry page	Locker outside the M&M’s Tower or the Lafayette Street entrance	$8 to $10 per locker
MetLife Stadium, East Rutherford	12 by 6 by 12 inches, clear bag required	Bag check on site	$5 per item at non NFL events, no charge at NFL games
UBS Arena, Elmont	12 by 12 by 6 inches	Bag check in the Acrisure Great Hall	Not published by the arena
Madison Square Garden, Manhattan	22 by 14 by 9 inches	No area to check bags, coats or belongings	No service to price
Barclays Center, Brooklyn	10 by 6 by 2 inches	Back to a vehicle, at an arena that owns no garage	No service to price
Yankee Stadium, Bronx	16 by 16 by 8 inches, soft sided	No storage area for any items, strollers only at the Gate 6 booth	No service to price

Read the last column and the ranking inverts against the second. Madison Square Garden allows the largest bag of the six and stores nothing at all, while Barclays Center allows the smallest and tells guests to return the bag to a vehicle at an arena that owns no garage. Newark sits mid table on inches and first on recovery, which is the column that decides the evening once the wrong bag is already at the door.

The single sentence that removes the laptop and the tablet in Newark

Prohibited items include all electronic devices with the exception of cell phones and non professional cameras, checked September 2026. One clause, written as a category rather than an inventory, takes out laptops, tablets, portable speakers and handheld consoles without naming any of them.

Neighbouring arenas write the same subject as a list and end up more permissive by accident. Barclays Center admits laptops, personal computers and tablets, and restricts only their use inside the seating bowl. UBS Arena bars laptops and personal computers and never names tablets, which leaves the tablet unresolved in Elmont and settled in Newark by a sentence that mentions neither.

Cameras run the same way. Small non professional cameras without an external flash or extendable lens are permitted for some events, and professional cameras with a lens of 2.5 inches or greater are refused. Both Barclays Center and UBS Arena draw that line at 3 inches, so the Newark threshold is the tightest of the three by half an inch. Video and audio equipment, GoPros, selfie sticks and tripods go no further than the door.

Six Newark rules that travel badly from any other arena

• Signs, banners, posters and flags cannot be larger than 8.5 by 11 inches, cannot be attached to a stick or pole, and cannot carry wires, lights or batteries. Brooklyn and Elmont both allow 11 by 17 inches, so a sign that clears Barclays Center or UBS Arena is well over double the Newark limit.
• Guests may not bring their own food or beverages to any event. No water bottle exception is published, where Yankee Stadium admits an empty reusable non glass bottle up to 24 oz and Citi Field judges bottles by seal and by temperature.
• Cash is refused at concession stands, retail locations and the Box Office. Reverse ATM kiosks with $0 transactional fees stand by sections 1, 14 and 125 and inside the Box Office Lobby, so a cash only visitor converts before buying anything.
• Small fold up umbrella strollers are permitted and should be stored under a seat. Anything that will not fit under a seat is refused entry but can be checked at the Guest Services Centers near Sections 9 and 114.
• Umbrellas are permitted if they stay closed and have no pointed end, which is looser than the pointed tip or large umbrellas refused in Brooklyn and Elmont. Storage is the guest’s problem: it must not block another seat’s view.
• Lost property goes to the Guest Services Center outside Sections 9 and 114 and is held for two weeks before donation to local charities, against the 10 days the Yankees publish. Guest Services also runs an anonymous in-event text line on 507.PC.GUEST, which dials as 507.724.8378.

Doors at 60 minutes and no ordinary way back out once you are in

Arena doors open approximately 60 to 90 minutes before an event starts, though times vary per event, checked September 2026. That window is the whole margin for a bag problem, because it has to cover the walk to a locker, the screening of whatever goes into it, and the queue at the magnetometers.

Re-entry closes the second option. Prudential Center runs a no re-entry policy during events, with certain exceptions such as a medical necessity, and those cases require coordinating with a Guest Services Supervisor before leaving the building. No exception of any kind is published by Barclays Center, so Newark is the more forgiving of the two, but only through a supervisor and only for a reason the arena accepts.

Two smaller traps close the rest of it. Ticket windows run Monday to Friday from 11am to 5pm and shut at weekends unless an event is on, when the Ticketmaster Box Office opens at 11am, so a ticket problem cannot be fixed in person on a quiet Sunday afternoon. Will Call opens 3 hours before show time at that same box office, reached from the entrance on Edison Place beside the Citizens Tower, and that is the one corner of the building with no locker outside it.

Editorial note: prices, schedules, and policies on this page were checked against the official sources named in the text in September 2026. Venues, airports, and transit agencies change them without notice; confirm with the operator before you travel. Westchester Ride does not sell tickets or parking and does not accept payment to rank any operator.

Four other venues in this comparison publish a depth and leave the guest to carry the consequence alone. Newark leaves the depth out and then sells a shelf for what that costs, at the $8 to $10 its own A-Z Guide publishes, outside two doors of the four. The missing dimension and the priced locker are one decision, not two.

Related guides

Every venue named above sets its own limit, and each one is measured here against its own published pages rather than against a regional average.

• Elmont sets 12 by 12 by 6 inches and keeps a bag check with no published price
• Brooklyn’s 10 by 6 by 2 inch limit and the remedy the arena cannot offer
• A 22 by 14 by 9 inch box at Madison Square Garden and nowhere to check it
• How Citi Field decides a backpack by transparency instead of inches
• Soft sided at 16 by 16 by 8 inches in the Bronx, with a booth only for strollers
• Transportation to every stadium and arena in the New York area