You’ve seen too many rankings like this? No, you haven’t, or so says your survey feedback. We decided to step up and present a permanent list of the largest football stadiums around the world!

From today onwards StadiumDB.com has a new section: Lists. Sure, it’s modest now, but the first list is the one you wanted the most, according to the 15-anniversary survey we launched. The Top 20 Biggest Football Stadiums is also a ranking that we wanted to do ourselves.

Primarily because there are literally hundreds of rankings like this one, which either present severely outdated capacities or forget to list stadia in some countries. Which isn’t too painful if that country is a rather remote one or not established on the international football map, but when you don’t include USA with the greatest number of large stadiums, that defies the purpose of any ranking.

So, having complained about the quality of lists like this, here’s the one we have for you tonight. Or actually two, because we divided the list into two different categories. You can navigate between them using our All-seater switch under the map. First list includes all stadia with their nominal capacities, regardless of the kind of seating/standing room they offer. The second category lists only internationally-compliant all-seater stadia.

And while we complained about other lists of this kind, ours can also have errors. If you see any, please report it because we want the section to remain accurate and up-to-date at all times.

Simple conclusion: getting smaller

We’ve searched, read and counted quite a lot during the creation of our first list and one most basic conclusion coming to mind is that most of the stadia have already seen their peak capacity. Now the tendency is opposite, forced to some extent by regulations (individual seating, growing press and disabled sections) and on the other hand on growing percentage of space-consuming corporate seating.

This is why as we write this capacities of Estadio Azteca and Gelora Bung Karno are being reduced, while further reductions are considered or have already been announced at ANZ Stadium, Beaver Stadium and Ohio Stadium. It seems the size fight is over, even if the title of largest stadium is still prestigious. Interestingly, two of the listed stadia can grow sooner than later, if only FC Barcelona and University of Texas proceed with their expansion plans.

All of the above plans and project will be on our radar so that we can offer you a reliable list of the biggest stadiums currently in use!