Bernabéu Stadium eyes 85,000 capacity

Image: Santiago Bernabéu Stadium, Luis García (Zaqarbal), CC BY-SA 4.0

Real Madrid is exploring the possibility of expanding the Bernabéu Stadium’s capacity to over 80,000 seats to put it in pole position to stage the 2030 World Cup Final.

Relevo said the Bernabéu continues to grow steadily and that new spaces and facilities will make it the best stadium in Europe.

Although the bulk of the work has already been completed, the club is still thinking about capacity and how the number of seats could comfortably exceed 80,000 even up to 85,000.

This figure hasn’t been randomly chosen as it is an essential FIFA requirement to host the 2030 World Cup final.

Real Madrid CF, commonly referred to as Real Madrid, is a Spanish professional football club based in Madrid, Spain. The club competes in LaLiga, the top tier of Spanish football.

The Bernabéu Stadium is a retractable roof football stadium in Madrid, Spain. With a seating capacity of 78, 297, the stadium has the second-largest seating capacity for a football stadium in Spain. It has been the home stadium of Real Madrid since its completion in 1947.

The Bernabéu is among the favorite stadiums to host the World Cup Final, but it needs to increase its capacity to confirm its bid. It is competing with the Spotify Camp Nou in Barcelona and the Grand Stade de Casablanca in Morocco.

There are both permanent and temporary options, but the club wants a solution that not only serves the World Cup but also steadily increases the stadium’s revenue.

The venue’s current capacity is a mystery, as the figures vary depending on different sources. LaLiga records from 2023, just after the renovation was completed, indicate that it has space for 81,044 spectators.

This is consistent with what club president Florentino Pérez stated that same year: “At the Bernabéu, we are authorized to hold 80,000 spectators, 1,000 up or 1,000 down, because if we had more, the law required us to have other emergency exits… and the like. So we left it at 80,000.”

However, attendance at the Bernabéu has not exceeded 80,000 so far this season. The highest number came against Barcelona in La Liga (78,192), and in the other two major matches so far this season, Atlético de Madrid in the same competition and Manchester City in the Champions League, the number reached 78,082 and 77,023 respectively.

The club knows how important it is to increase its seating capacity and hopes to do so by several thousand.

The addition of new VIP areas has resulted in a loss of seats relative to the pre-construction capacity, but ideas to add more were considered from the outset, and now the best options are being studied to implement them in the coming months.

In the run-up to the 2030 World Cup final, they’re battling two large venues that want to be ready by then.

One of them, the Camp Nou, is impossible to compete with in terms of capacity. Barcelona’s stadium has a capacity for 99,000 people, but after its renovation, it is expected to reach well over 100,000.

Morocco, on the other hand, wants to enter the fray with what they hope will be the world’s largest stadium. It will be located in Casablanca and will accommodate 115,000 spectators.

Madrid has the modernity of its new stadium in its favor. The retractable roof, which allows it to be closed, the 360-degree video scoreboard, and the logistics tunnel make the venue a very attractive option for the organizers.

This is not to mention the good relationship between Gianni Infantino and Florentino Pérez, which could also play an important role in the selection process.

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