AFAS Stadion

The story here isn't the ground so much as what sits above it. On 10 August 2019 a summer storm tore part of the roof off, and the failure traced back to poor welding, design errors and corrosion working together over time. The rebuild that followed, finished in 2021 at a cost of €38 million, replaced the original self-supporting structure with a different design entirely — a 630-tonne truss now hangs from crane-like supports outside the bowl rather than resting on it, and the new covering reaches further out over the stands, cutting down on the rain and wind that used to reach spectators. Floodlights went into the roof edge itself, and the four separate light masts came down.

None of that had anything to do with a tournament bid. AFAS Stadion has never been remodelled for a World Cup or a European Championship; the 2021 work happened because the roof forced it.

The ground opened in 2006 as DSB Stadion, named for its bank sponsor, and held roughly 17,000 seats at the time. When DSB Bank collapsed in 2009 the name went briefly to AZ Stadion before software firm AFAS took over the naming rights in 2010 — though UEFA competitions still list it under AZ Stadion, following the governing body's own rules on sponsor names. A plan to add a second tier to three of the four stands, taking capacity toward 30,000, stalled after the DSB collapse and has stayed shelved ever since. What did go ahead was smaller: the post-storm reconstruction lifted capacity to around 19,500.