Volksparkstadion

Hamburg tore down its own stadium to rebuild it, and the new Volksparkstadion, opened on 30 April 1998 to a design by architect Gustav Elsner, has spent the years since fielding a run of sponsor names that outlasted most of the tenants below it. AOL Arena, HSH Nordbank Arena, Imtech Arena — the ground carried each in turn before the Imtech contract expired in June 2015 and it went back to the name it opened with, in Bahrenfeld.

The bowl seats 57,000 for Bundesliga fixtures, though UEFA's seating rules cut that to 51,500 for international nights, and the record crowd, 57,000 for HSV's 1–0 win over Bayern Munich on 30 January 2009, still stands as the mark of what the place can hold at full stretch. The pitch runs on a hybrid system — 99.97 per cent natural turf reinforced with a trace of synthetic fibre, enough to keep the surface together through a heavy fixture list.

Few German grounds have hosted as wide a spread of football. The stadium took matches at the 1974 and 2006 World Cups, at Euro 1988, and again at Euro 2024, where the quarter-final between Portugal and France went all the way to penalties, 3–5, after a goalless 90 minutes. It staged the 2010 Europa League final, Atlético Madrid seeing off Fulham 2–1, and outside football it hosted one of the era's marquee boxing nights, Wladimir Klitschko against David Haye, on 2 July 2011.