Fortuna-Arena

The stadium that hosts Fortuna Düsseldorf has never carried the name Fortuna-Arena officially; it has gone through three sponsor identities since it opened.

It replaced the Rheinstadion, a ground dating to 1925 that stood on the same site until it was pulled down in 2002. The new build went up between 2002 and 2004 and opened on 10 September 2004 with a friendly against Union Berlin, won 2:0. Construction ran to somewhere between 218 and 240 million euros.

Sponsorship has rewritten the name three times: LTU Arena until June 2009, Esprit Arena until 2 August 2018, and Merkur Spiel-Arena since. UEFA and the EBU strip sponsor names for their own events, so during Eurovision 2011 and the 2024 European Championship it reverted, on paper, to the neutral Düsseldorf Arena.

A 2010 reconfiguration converted part of the seating to standing terraces, taking football capacity to 54,600, including 9,917 standing places; for concerts the bowl opens up to 66,500. The Euro 2024 quarter-final between England and Switzerland was played here, and the record crowd for a sporting fixture — 53,586 — came not from football but from the 2024 European handball championship, for Germany against Switzerland.