SOCCER
When will Barcelona return to Spotify Camp Nou after renovation work?
Barça return to Lluís Companys Olympic Stadium in Montjuïc for their Champions League clash with Young Boys.
Barcelona are in Champions League action against Young Boys on Tuesday, playing their first home fixture of the new UCL season. Except, they won’t really be at their home.
The club’s iconic Spotify Camp Nou has been out of action since June 2022 when Barça began a huge renovation project designed to boost the commercial revenue. The club had hoped to reopen doors in late 2024 to coincide with the club’s 125th anniversary on November 29.
“We don’t want to set dates because it might happen later or it might even happen earlier,” club president Joan Laporta said earlier this year. “Despite the obstacles, I believe that by the end of the year we will be able to come back.”
However delays in the construction work mean that the process will take longer than initially expected. Earlier this month the club admitted that Barcelona will not be back at Camp Nou until April 2025, at the earliest.
It remains to be seem is the club will hit that new, more generous, deadline. But with Barcelona continuing to walk a financial tightrope the club’s hierarchy will be desperate to see the team back at Camp Nou for the start of the 2025/26 season.
How much will the Camp Nou building work cost?
The Camp Nou renovation is now expected to cost $1 billion. The club’s Espai Barça project, an effort to modernise the infrastructure, has a total projected cost of $1.7 billion.
However those figures are just one part of the equation for Barcelona. Each game played away from Camp Nou, at the considerably smaller Estadio Montjuïc, costs the club money.
In 2023/24 it was estimated that one year spent away from the ancestral home had cost around $100 million in lost revenue and the extra expense of preparing the back-up stadium.
Last year Laporta was bullish about the renovation process, insisting that it would help to re-establish the club at the forefront of the game: “There was nostalgia when we first came, but now you can start to imagine what it will look like new. The works are on schedule. We’ve spoken with everyone involved and we are happy.”
“We hope everyone will feel at home again in one of the world’s benchmark stadiums. We have shown courage with this project,” he added.