Etihad Park – construction description

In 2015, New York City FC joined Major League Soccer as the second club from the New York metropolitan area, alongside the New York Red Bulls. From the very beginning, however, the team had no dedicated stadium, playing most of its home matches at Yankee Stadium, the baseball venue of MLB’s New York Yankees.

Plans for a New York City FC stadium were discussed even before the team made its league debut, but over the years successive proposed locations were rejected and the project failed to move forward.

A breakthrough came only in November 2022, when Willets Point was selected as the site of the new stadium. The neglected area lies right next to Citi Field, the home ballpark of another MLB team, the New York Mets.

The new stadium will have a capacity of 25,000 and a traditional soccer-specific seating layout. Its signature feature will be “The Cube” – the main entrance in the southwest corner, designed as a rectangular portal clad with screens on the inside.

The project also includes a comprehensive redevelopment of a 23-acre site, with new housing, commercial spaces, a hotel, and an elementary school.

The groundbreaking ceremony took place on December 4, 2024. Construction is scheduled for completion ahead of the 2027 season, and through a naming rights deal with Etihad Airways, the stadium will be called Etihad Park.

More details about the Etihad Park project can be found on a dedicated webpage