Renovation of Barça’s Camp Nou stadium will begin in June

Work on the FC Barcelona stadium will start in June after the council greenlighted the team’s new Camp Nou building plans some weeks ago. The stadium will be under construction until at least 2025/26. Fans and football players will use the Lluís Companys Olympic stadium on Montjuïc for the 2023/24 season. This public infrastructure was built for the 1992 Olympic Games and in the recent past it has also been the temporary field for Espanyol, the city’s other major football team.

As the stadium is much smaller than the Camp Nou, FC Barcelona will have to reduce the maximum capacity to 60,000 spectators next season. Camp Nou, on the other hand, can now host up to 99,354 people. “When we play in Montjuïc, club members will need to apply for temporary leaves as there will not be enough seats for everyone, but we will also optimize partial capacity. We think we will be able to manage it right,” FC Barcelona president Joan Laporta said during a press conference in the city hall.

Works to demolish the third grandstand of the Camp Nou were expected to start during the 2022/23 season, but the team decided to postpone them a year, citing the uncertainty caused by the war in Ukraine, price hikes, and the shortage of materials. With the postponement, the stadium can almost have its full capacity during the football season. The works will start in the summer of 2023, once the season is over. It will be during the 2023/24 season that the main construction works will take place, coinciding with the team’s move to the Montjuïc stadium.

After that, during the 2024/25 season, players and fans will return to the Camp Nou but at 50% capacity, as some works will still be underway. “Once we return to our stadium in 2024/25 with partial capacity, we will prepare a democratic rotation among club members, so construction does not only affect members with seats in the area where work is ongoing. We will adapt to the demand for available seats,” Laporta explained.

Sports, entertainment, and innovation

The new Camp Nou stadium will not only host football matches, but other cultural events as well. “We can proudly say, as a team and as a city, that we will have the biggest, most innovative, and nice sports and entertainment space,” Joan Laporta explained. The stadium will see sustainable improvements, as well as new innovative, technological, and accessibility measures.

“We will be a place of reference in the sports and entertainment sector, but also a place of reference in terms of sustainability, innovation, and technology,” the club president said. The club aims to facilitate access to the stadium via public transport and electric vehicles, and up to 60% of parking spots will be for electric cars.

The roof of the new Camp Nou will e covered in 18,000 sqm’s worth of solar panels that will generate enough electricity to power 600 homes in Barcelona’s Eixample district. In addition to this, a rainwater collection system will be installed to water the field 10 times per year.