Estadio Olímpico Atahualpa

Estadio Olímpico Atahualpa is located in the El Batán district and was once a prominent venue in Quito football: every major club in the capital — El Nacional, Universidad Católica, América de Quito, Deportivo Quito — played there before the Rodrigo Paz Delgado ground opened and took over as the city's principal venue.

The national team kept coming back long after that. On 7 November 2001, Ecuador beat Uruguay there in front of roughly 40,000 people, a result that sent the country to its first World Cup. The attendance record itself dates further back, to 19 June 1993, when 45,000 packed in for a Copa América tie against the United States — a figure the current capacity, cut down to 35,258, no longer allows. Ecuador drifted away from the Atahualpa as its default home after 2017, returning mainly for major tournament fixtures or when no other ground was available.

The name itself changed underneath the stadium. Built between 1948 and 1951 under the contractor Menatlas Quito and architect Oscar Etwanick, it opened in November 1951 as the Estadio Olímpico Municipal de El Batán. It took the name Atahualpa only around 1963, on a proposal by Alfredo Pachel Rivera honouring the Inca ruler — a civic gesture rather than a sponsorship deal, and the ground has carried no commercial name since.

Ownership has stayed with Quito's municipal authority throughout, though for years day-to-day management passed to the Concentración Deportiva de Pichincha under concession. In 2025 the municipality moved to take that management back in-house.