Estádio Beira Rio

Rio built the Beira-Rio itself. Between 1959 and 1969 the club funded construction through the Campanha do Tijolo, a brick-buying drive before a ball was kicked there; it opened on 6 April 1969, on the shore of the Guaíba lagoon, which gave it both its working name and its nickname, Gigante da Beira-Rio.

The record crowd dates to 17 June 1972: 106,554 for a 3-3 draw between a Rio Grande do Sul state select side and the Brazil national team, at a time when the bowl still held over 70,000 standing and seated. Individual plastic seating went in between 2002 and 2007, cutting that figure to around 60,000, and a further rebuild for the 2014 World Cup — running from December 2010 to February 2014, costed at somewhere between 330 and 400 million reais — added a lower tier, hospitality boxes and a leaf-shaped roof of 65 fibreglass-membrane segments. FIFA had the ground at 51,800 for the tournament itself; the settled capacity since is 50,842.

In May 2024 the Guaíba came into the stadium rather than past it: floodwater reached 80cm inside the bowl, knocking out the electronics, with damage to the club put as high as 40 million reais. The pitch had to be relaid, and the ground was back in use by July 2024, roughly two months on. Beira-Rio also hosted matches at the 2006 Copa América without staging either final, and has drawn crowds well outside football: Pink Floyd played The Wall there in 2012, Genesis closed a tour there in 2018.