StadiumDBStadium of the Year 2023: The final countdown!
source: StadiumDB.com; author: Kuba Kowalski
Here we go! Well, almost - the competition for the best stadium of the year will start on February 10. Who will win, who will surprise and who will... disappoint and finish in last place? There have been many winners and losers in our competition over the 13 years - ahead of you, the stadium with the biggest and... smallest score in history plus more memories.
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The beginning - a beautiful victory and the lowest score
The top of the first edition of Stadium of the Year (carried out only on the Polish version of the website) was dominated by Polish venues. In second and third place were, respectively, Stadion Miejski from Poznań and Stadion Józefa Piłsudskiego from Kraków. The offensive of Poland's refurbished arenas, however, was not enough for a strong candidate - Aviva Stadium from Dublin. It must be said that it was a well-deserved win.
In that edition we met, as it turned out years later, the worst Stadium of the Year contender in history - Angola's Estádio Nacional de Ombaka. Of course, this year's vote will not be the last, but it is unlikely that any stadium will score less than 68 points in the future. The spiteful would say that the stadium was only voted for by the stadium management, or that there were problems with internet access in Angola. Either way, our competition at the time was just taking off - it only got better after that.
© William Murphy (cc: by-sa) / streetsofdublin.com | Aviva Stadium
The glory days
In 2014, as many as 32 new stadiums appeared on the stadium map of the world. But what facilities they were! We recall with nostalgia the competition held at the beginning of 2015, in which a record 96,772 people took part. But it didn't stop there - the winner of this edition received the most votes in the history of Stadium of the Year. With 134,725 points, Allianz Parque - one of several great venues located in Sao Paulo - came first.
A little later, in 2022, our long-standing efforts to organise the Stadium of the Year competition were rewarded. The winner of the twelfth edition of the poll was Spain's unrivalled Estadio El Sadar, and we presented the statue... in person! At the special invitation of CA Osasuna, the founder of Stadiony.net and StadiumDB.com, Grzegorz Kaliciak, travelled to Navarre and presented the Stadium of the Year statuette to Osasuna's President, Luis Sabalza, just before the game against Real Madrid. The ceremony was broadcast on the official La Liga telecast in 115 countries. Perhaps that is why twice as many people took part in the vote the following year as did then.
Presenting a statuette at Estadio El Sadar
High hopes
Stadium of the Year 2023 can only be one. Well, unless there is a tie... Follow our website and our social media - Instagram, Facebook and X - so you don't miss the start of the competition. But even then, it won't be the end of the world - there's up to a month to submit your votes! Votes, because you have as many as five to distribute, and here are the stadiums you'll be able to cast them for:
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