Budapest will host the men’s Champions League final in 2026, while the 2027 final could return to Milan if the San Siro stadium is renovated in the meantime, UEFA decided on Wednesday.
The next two hosts of the meeting were already known: London to see Borussia Dortmund and Real Madrid face off on June 1, then Munich on May 31, 2025 for the first edition of the new C1 formula.
Meeting in Dublin a few hours before the Europa League final (Bayer Leverkusen-Atalanta Bergamo), the UEFA executive committee postponed its final decision for 2027 until September 24, while waiting for the Italian federation to “submit information on San Siro stadium renovation plans.
Furthermore, he respectively awarded the 2026 and 2027 Europa League finals to Istanbul and Frankfurt, and those of the Conference League to Leipzig and Istanbul.
For women, Oslo will host the 2026 Champions League final, while that of 2027 remains on hold. Germany will have already hosted European competition finals in 2026 and 2027 “and Stuttgart’s candidacy cannot therefore be accepted”, explained UEFA.
Finally, the body based in Nyon has extended and expanded its experiment on the return of standing stands for European club competitions, in progress since 2022/2023 in France, Germany and England, then in Italy and Spain.
In order to obtain “a larger sample and a greater diversity of data”, this program is extended in 2024/2025 and extended to Dutch, Portuguese, Belgian, Scottish and Austrian clubs, which already allow standing places at national level .
“Attending matches while standing contributes enormously to the atmosphere of matches, is an important element of fan culture across the continent and helps reduce the cost of these matches,” said Ronan Evain, executive director of the Football Association. Supporters Europe (FSE), in a separate press release.
Gregor Weinreich, coordinator of the “Europe wants to stand” campaign, pointed out that at Bayern Munich, supporters have been attending C1 matches standing for two years now, without additional risk, hoping that UEFA will eventually revise its regulations.
The standing stands, a place of fervor as well as a means of increasing reception capacity, had been banned by the European body after the tragedies of Hillsborough in 1989 and Furiani in 1992.
