Bosuil Stadion – construction description

Royal Antwerp FC's historical home in the Deurne district saw the first phase of complete overhaul in June of 2017. The ambitious plan foresaw the replacement of the west side, dating back to 1923, with a modern single-tier structure with 5,362 seats. It was a vast improvement on the previous one, which was only able to hold 2,373 people. According to initial estimates by the contractor, work was due to conclude alreadt in September.

Construction took slightly longer than expected, but it still proved impressive when compared to other builds of this scale. Until opening in late November, the contract only took 20 weeks to finalise. With a heavily glazed facade, the grandstand's 6-level structure comprises most of the crucial club facilities, including a fan zone, restaurant for 700 people and hospitality facilities to service the 20 boxes incorporated on top of regular seats.

Already during this phase it was announced that similar changes would be carried out across other grandstands. With Royal returning to the Belgian top flight in 2017, the goal became to reach 20,000.

Further plans have been announced in September of 2018. Introduced by the mayor of Antwerp and chairman of Ghelamco, the updated vision included reconstruction of remaining three stands in a way that would see them create a uniform ensemble with the new main stand. That said, these sections were expected to have two tiers.

Eventual capacity has exceeded the initial estimate by further 3,000. Reaching this size would push Royal Antwerp to the top five of Belgian pro league stadiums in terms of capacity.

This time work wasn't going as fast as with the first phase. Because of procedural issues, demolition of the old southern pavilion structure could only start in July of 2019. Two remaining stands were left for further development.

Work on the construction of the new south stand began in November 2019 and was scheduled to be completed in the second quarter of 2020. However, the COVID-19 pandemic slowed down the completion of the new stand. The work was finally finalised in the summer of 2021, but there is still no concrete information about the reconstruction of the north and east stands.