Stade Intwari

Stade Intwari stands on the same patch of Rohero it always did, off Avenue Muyinga. Its predecessor, raised in the early 1960s under the name Stade Prince Louis Rwagasore, carried the country through independence-era football; workers pulled it down in 2022 to start again from bare ground.

What came back holds 22,000, and the inauguration itself became the story as much as the stadium — President Évariste Ndayishimiye cut the ribbon in person. Vital'O FC, long the country's most decorated club, moves back in alongside BS Dynamik, Bujumbura City FC, Inter Star and Rukinzo FC, which makes Intwari less a single team's fortress than the shared address for Burundian football in the capital. The national side gets its home ground back too, after seasons of qualifiers played wherever a pitch could be arranged.

The rebuild explains why locals still sometimes reach for the old name out of habit, even with the new signage up. For a ground this young, the history worth telling is less about matches played on it and more about the gap it was built to close.