As Royal Antwerp prepare to play again in the top tier, their stadium will get a brand new main grandstand. Most interestingly, it's expected to be ready within just 3 months!

After 13 years of absence, Royal Antwerp are returning back to the top of Belgian football. Soon after having secured promotion, the team filed their planning application to completely reconstruct the western main grandstand of Bosuil Stadion.

While the stand itself has been opened back in 1923, it's been substantially revamped in 2013-2015. Thus the decision to rebuild it can be seen as surprising.

Capacity of the west side will more than double, growing from 2,373 to 5,362 people. However, the leap in capacity will be minimised by reductions in other sections (north and east), where efforts to welcome more disabled fans will result in significant cuts in regular seating.

Overall the capacity is to stay at 12,975 for the short term, while further phases of the revamp should see it reach 20,000.

The new main stand will not only host more fans than before but most importantly offer six floors of infrastructure behind the auditorium. This way enough room for office, administration, press and hospitality areas will be created.

The project was approved for construcion just days ago, on Friday and majority of the work is expected to be done by late September. In other words: it should be operational just a few weeks into the season, meaning a very fast progress rate!

The project is entirely private, so it required no tender proceedings. Construction will be carried out by Ghelamco, while the design was prepared by Jaspers-Eyers, another company renowned for stadium projects in Belgium.