Sports fans love it - Budapest's National Athletics Centre in the TOP 5 in the Stadium of the Year poll

The Stadium of the Year online vote was organised for the fourteenth time, with sports facilities with a capacity of more than 10,000 seats, newly built or renovated in 2023, eligible for nomination. Voters selected five of the 35 nominees and ranked them.

The Hungarian sports facility hosting the 2023 World Athletics Championships came top in the competition for facilities not built for football matches.

The stadium was built by BMSK Zrt, acting as the Investment Agency, and the general contractor was ZÁÉV Zrt. and Magyar Építő Zrt..

Stadium of the Year title goes to South America

The 46,000-seat football stadium in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, home to Atlético Mineiro, received the most votes. The silver medal went to Germany's Karlsruher SC's 34,000-seat arena, ahead of Sosnowiec's 11,600-seat football stadium. Orlen Stadium, also in Poland and home to Wisła Płock, was fourth in the TOP 5 sports facilities, with 116603 stadiums in the same city. The National Athletics Centre in Budapest received the fifth best rating from more than 12,000 voters.

Explosion at the beginning of construction

The National Athletics Centre was able to accommodate 35,000 people during world competitions, with an additional 15,000 spectators in the stands. No other facility built for purposes other than football was able to beat the Budapest National Athletics Centre in the vote. Construction of the National Athletics Centre, which took only 28 months to complete, began in November 2020. Our readers were able to follow the construction process continuously here. We also reported on how the approximately 60-metre-high VITUKI tower on the work site was demolished.

The facility will be used as a sports centre after the World Cup

The construction of the monolithic structure of the athletics centre was carried out with meticulous organisation and at a very tight pace.In July 2021, the 48 diamond shells, 28 metres high, which make up the steel structure of the stadium, which gives it its impressive appearance, started to be lifted into place.
The elements, each weighing almost 100 tonnes, were assembled on site by the experts. They were then transported by an SPMT vehicle, used to transport large goods, to the crawler crane, which lifted the structural elements into position. The steel and cable-roofed structure, which gave the structure its imposing form, was completed in just under four and a half months.

The next phase of the work involved covering the roof with membrane, and the specialists completed the 27,000 square metre surface in September 2022. The 168-metre-long pedestrian bridge between the stadium and the training grounds on Csepel Island was also handed over this month. In June 2023, a family festival was held to inaugurate the facility, which will be used as a sports centre after the World Athletics Championships.