El Sadar Stadium capacity expansion

Article posted by Coliseum, February 12^th, 2026

Image: Club Atlético Osasuna on Facebook

The LaLiga team CA Osasuna recently presented to the Government of Navarre its project to expand the capacity of their home ground – the El Sadar Stadium in Navarre, Spain.

‘osasuna.es’ stated that as previously reported the club has been working on expanding the capacity of their home stadium for more than a year and has held several technical meetings with the Emergency, Prevention and Civil Protection Service in order to prepare the formal request to amend the venue’s operating license to allow for additional seating.

The Club Atlético Osasuna or simply Osasuna is a Spanish professional football club based in Pamplona, Navarre (Spain). It was founded on October 24^th, 1920 and plays in LaLiga, the top division of Spanish football. The El Sadar Stadium serves as their home stadium.

The El Sadar Stadium is a football stadium in Pamplona, Navarre, Spain. The stadium holds 23,516 people. It was built in 1967 and is the home of Osasuna.

‘osasuna.es’ further stated that the proposal includes a reconfiguration of the evacuation corridors and seating areas that would increase the stadium’s capacity by 1,178 spectators. According to the computer simulation included in the project the stadium would be fully evacuated in an estimated 826 seconds bringing the total capacity to 24,754 following the expansion.

The evacuation time included in the original license was 802 seconds meaning the new proposal represents an increase of 24 seconds compared with the initially authorized scenario.

The report prepared by Ingeniería Valladares (a Madrid-based, multidisciplinary engineering firm) provides a detailed description of the stadium’s evacuation process by zones, routes and exits incorporating in-depth simulations of the spectator flow behavior.

In addition, the evacuation model has been validated by an independent third party, Cepretec, as was done for the original stadium project. According to that validation, the building evacuates all occupants to a safe external area in a similar – and therefore equivalent – timeframe to that established in the original license without the proposed increase in capacity diminishing evacuation safety conditions.

Madrid (Spain)-based Cepretec is a company established in 2007 by CEPREVEN (Association for the Investigation of Safety of Lives and Property) to handle technical service demands including fire safety audits, installation certification and emergency plans. It operates as a separate, commercial entity focusing on risk management services.

Based on these findings the project demonstrates compliance with the basic Fire Safety requirement regarding occupant evacuation as set out in Article 5 of Royal Decree 314/2006. Osasuna has therefore formally requested authorization for the corresponding administrative licenses.

The Government of Navarre will now review the submitted documentation and issue its decision on the club’s proposed capacity expansion.

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