Bonchuk Stadium

The date that fixes this ground in Bulgarian memory is 2 November 1977, when Marek met Bayern Munich here in the second round of the UEFA Cup. Gerd Müller, Uli Hoeneß and Karl-Heinz Rummenigge were in the visiting side; Marek won 2-0, with a crowd put at some 32,000. Seven weeks earlier, on 14 September, Marek had torn Ferencváros to shreds on the same pitch, 3-0. The following September, in the Cup Winners' Cup, they beat an Aberdeen team managed by Alex Ferguson 3-2.

The name predates all of it and outlasted a good deal more. Bonchuk was the nom de guerre of the partisan Nikola Chukovski. Between 1949 and 1990 the town around the ground was not Dupnitsa at all but Stanke Dimitrov; the stadium kept its name through the whole of that period.

What followed the European nights was steadier work. Marek played roughly thirty seasons of top-flight football here. By June 2002, when the club beat the Welsh side Caersws 2-0 in the Intertoto Cup, the attendance was 1,500.

The municipality owns the ground and has paid for its upkeep: new seating and a reworked away sector, completed on 15 August 2012, then further infrastructure work in 2014. In April 2021 the town council granted FC Marek 1915 free use of the stadium for ten years, keeping ownership itself. That September the pitch hosted a kickboxing gala staged by the Patriot club.