Green light for Cagliari Calcio stadium

Image: Comune Cagliari

Italian Serie A club Cagliari Calcio’s new stadium has been given the final go-ahead by municipal authorities in Sardinia.

Mayor Massimo Zedda made the announcement, confirming the successful conclusion of the Decisional Services Conference, the final bureaucratic step required to approve the stadum project.

Zedda said, “We’ve been waiting for this news for 10 years. Today, the Decisional Services Conference, which approved the project for the new stadium, has been successfully concluded.”

It has been a long process to get to the final decision, involving technical steps, environmental studies and much paperwork.

Now, however, as the Mayor explains, the process has also been completed in terms of environmental and landscape authorizations, obtained through the Single Regional Authorization Provision.

Cagliari Calcio, commonly referred to as Cagliari, is an Italian football club based in Cagliari, Sardinia, Italy. In the 2025-2026 seasons, they compete in Serie A, the top of the Italian football league system.

The team are temporarily playing their home games at the 16,416-seat Unipol Domus, the temporary stadium built in 2017 adjacent to their future new stadium site.

Cagliari Calcio played at the 16,000-capacity Stadio Sant’Elia in Cagliari from 1970 to 2017. The stadium was demolished at the end of the 2016-2017 seasons and was replaced by the Unipol Domus.

The new stadium given the go-ahead for Cagliari Calcio is called Nuovo Stadio Cagliari. It is being built in place of the now-demolished Stadio Sant’Elia. The new stadium is also known as the Cagliari Arena, or the Stadio Riva. The stadium will be named after the club legend Gigi Riva.

The club has also signed a 10-year agreement with the Italian financial services holding company Unipol to name the new stadium, which could be called Unipol-Gigi Riva when it opens. The project for the new stadium is now entering the operational phase.

The new stadium has been designed by Sportium and Manica Architecture and will have a capacity of 25,200.

Zedda added, “We will proceed quickly with the next steps. And as soon as Cagliari Calcio submits the updated economic and financial plan, we can work on the formalities for publishing the international tender for the construction and management concession for the new facility.”

The venue, to be built in the Sant’Elia neighborhood, will be a modern facility.

It is designed not only to be the“new home of football,”but also to host “concerts, shows, and major events,” thus becoming a “point of reference for all Sardinians.”

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