It is time for a new journey along the construction sites of the world and see how works are progressing on a few stadiums. You can find earlier versions of our monthly construction updates here, here, here, and here.
We always start with the next stadium to open, which is now the Grêmio Arena. It is set to open on the 8th of December with a show and a friendly match between Grêmio and Hamburger SV.
The arena is indeed nearing completion, though it feels as there is still a significant amount of work to do in the upcoming month.
This is what the exterior of the stadium currently looks like:
© Juliano Kracker
The above photo comes from the official arena.gremio.net, which also has a very nice time lapse on the homepage that shows the incredible progress of the stadium in the last few months.
If you are in the area and fancy attending the opening match, there are still about 15,000 tickets available, though don’t expect to get in for a bargain as the cheapest tickets cost US$ 50.00. We recently reported on how Brazil is topping the leagues if it comes to the most expensive tickets, and if this sets a trend for the new generation of modern stadiums, then more and more Brazilian football fans may find themselves priced out of the home matches of their team.
Next up is the Tele2 Arena, the new home of Swedish sides Hammarby IF and Djurgårdens IF. It will be the second new stadium in Stockholm to open in the span of a year after the Friends Arena opened last week.
This is from today of the webcam on the official website of the Tele2 Arena.
We would also very much recommend this excellent blog that tracks the progress of the arena, which is set to open next year. This post has some excellent photos from the air.
Last Sunday, the arena opened for a group of Hammarby fans to take a first look inside. This is the photo special of that day.
In Poland, in the meantime, the new Stadion w Zabrzu of Górnik Zabrze is slowly taking shape. This photo was taken a few weeks ago and clearly shows the stands rising up.
Photo: © Stadion w Zabrzu
Górnik has left one of the old stands standing so that they can keep playing their home matches at the stadium while building works continue. Capacity is capped at about 3,000 places for the time being.
In Russia, the first 2018 World Cup stadiums are already under construction. We earlier already published updates on the new Spartak Stadium and Rubin Kazan Stadium, and this is what the New Zenit Stadium looks like at the moment.
Works do not seem to be progressing very fast, but with almost six years to go until the World Cup, there is obviously no reason to rush.
The next photo has got nothing to do with association football, but is still pretty impressive and the perfect example of how to make a big stadium even bigger.
This is Lambeau Field, home of NFL (American football) side Green Bay Packers:
© Flickr user Lizz Koch
The extra tier at the southern end zone will add an additional 6,700 seats to the present 73,000, and is scheduled to be completed before the start of the 2013 season.
We have been noticing lately that while new stadiums do open, very few works get started and the number of future stadiums in our database is slowly diminishing. Let’s hope that a few of the touted projects of the likes of Inter, Roma, Spurs, Lyon, and Atlético take off soon as to spice things up a little.