It was a tumultuous period, but also a very encouraging one. We saw even people at the heart of the COVID-19 crisis voting for Stadium of the Year. Your verdict will soon be revealed!

Ever since Stadium of the Year became an international affair, we've never had a list of candidates so short. For that reason alone we realised it would not be anywhere near breaking attendance records. Optimistically, before COVID-19 became a global crisis, we were hoping to break 40,000 votes, pessimistically as low as half of that number.

That's why we're happy to say that despite the coronavirus pandemic we've recorded 30,632 valid votes. That's just slightly short of last year's number, when the list of candidates was much longer and no global threat was upon us. We'd especially like to thank voters from countries and cities literally at the heart of the pandemic who found the time and attention to take part! Our thoughts are with you as we're under quarantine ourselves now.

Please give us just a couple more days of patience to analyse the voting populous. On March 18 we'll be ready to present to you the Popular Vote winner. As of now, the Jury Award is still not decided but we also hope the Jury will be able to deliver a verdict soon enough for us to present the winner on March 18.