RheinEnergieStadion

The old ground here was called Müngersdorfer Stadion, and for most of the twentieth century it held more people than it does now — sixty to eighty thousand in its original form, still sixty-one thousand after the 1975 rebuild for the 1974 World Cup, the configuration that hosted Euro 1988. The single biggest crowd, seventy-six thousand, watched West Germany play Austria in 1953. None of that survives in brick: between 2002 and 2004 the whole structure came down and went up again as a roofed, athletics-track-free football ground, designed by Gerkan, Marg und Partner and built by Max Bögl at a cost of around €117 million, reopening on 31 January 2004 under its present sponsor's name.

1. FC Köln have called it home since 1948, longer than the current building has existed, and FC Viktoria Köln and the German national side also play here. Under UEFA's neutral-naming rules the ground reverts to Stadion Köln for continental fixtures, which is how it appeared for five matches at the 2006 World Cup, five more at Euro 2024, and the 2020 Europa League final, where Sevilla beat Inter 3-2.

It has also built a separate reputation as a concert venue, drawing The Rolling Stones, Michael Jackson, Queen and Beyoncé among others, with P!nk's 2019 show still the attendance record at 77,313 — a figure the football side rarely touches now that capacity sits at 49,698 for Bundesliga fixtures and drops to 45,965 for European nights.