Volgograd Arena – a diamond of the first water among Russian stadiums | The Football Stadiums.com

Volgograd - Volgograd Arena 25.07.2017: The 2018 World Cup will be played at twelve venues in eleven cities in Russia. Two of those stadiums stand in Moscow, the other ten are in cities all over Russia. The fifth largest venue for the 2018 World Cup is situated in Volgograd, a city with a population of more than a million people, located in the South European part of Russia on the river Volga. A new football stadium, with a capacity of 45,000, is being built there mainly for the purpose of providing venue for the World Cup.

Construction of the new Volgograd Arena, which will also become the new home ground of the local club – FC Rotor Volgograd, began in 2014 on the site of the old Centralnyj Stadium. The arena, which will hold 45,568 people, will be built on the bank of the river Volga in 2017 and it will be ready to host World Cup matches the following year.

A diamond design: The stadium façade was designed so as to be reminiscent of a diamond at night. It has three-tier stands and the middle one is reserved for VIP guests. This layout is usual for a lot of modeworrn stadiums nowadays.

Source: SPORT-IN

The estimated cost of construction is 16.4 billion RUB. The costs also include the redevelopment of traffic infrastructure in the vicinity of the stadium – a motorway, railway station and river transport.

Reduction in capacity after the 2018 World Cup: The stadium will have a capacity of more than 45,000. According to the project, designed by the architecture firm SPORT-IN, it will be possible to reduce the capacity by 10,000 after the World Cup. Nevertheless, a capacity of 35,000 will still be comparatively high for the Rotor matches.