Avicii Arena

• 1. Introduction

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  Avicii Arena sits in the Johanneshov district of Stockholm, a perfect white sphere rising over the city like something dropped from orbit. Its diameter stretches 110 metres, its inner height reaches 85 metres, and its volume fills 605,000 cubic metres. When it opened on the 19th of February 1989, after less than three years of construction, it was unlike anything Sweden had built before. Locals did not need to learn a corporate name to find it. They simply called it Globen. What makes a building become a landmark? What happens when a city's most recognizable structure quietly changes its identity again and again? And how does a sphere of steel, concrete, and glass come to carry the name of a young man who died at thirty?

• 2. The Sphere Itself

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  Berg Arkitektkontor AB designed the structure, and engineers supported it using a MERO space structure, a modular system of connecting rods and nodes capable of spanning enormous distances without internal columns. The result was a building with 16,000 seats for concerts and shows, and 13,850 for ice hockey. Up in the upper reaches of the arena, 40 VIP boxes ring the interior alongside a restaurant. For years, Avicii Arena held the title of the second largest spherical building on Earth. That changed in 2023, when the Las Vegas Sphere took the top position. The building also carries a distinction most visitors may not immediately grasp: it represents the Sun in the Sweden Solar System, the world's largest scale model of the Solar System. The planets of that model are positioned across the country at their true proportional distances from this building, making the arena the literal centre of a map that spans a nation.

• 3. Names and Identity

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  In 2009, Swedish telecommunications company Ericsson acquired the naming rights to what had been called the Stockholm Globe Arena. The building became the Ericsson Globe, a corporate label that sat awkwardly alongside the name Stockholmers already used. The local metro station kept its original name, Globen, and so did most of the people who went there. Then, in 2021, came an announcement that reframed the building's identity entirely. The arena would be renamed the Avicii Arena, in honour of the Swedish DJ Avicii, who had died in 2018. To mark the occasion, the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra recorded a performance of the Avicii song "For a Better Day". Vocals came from a fourteen-year-old Swedish singer named Ella Tiritiello. It was a deliberate choice to make the tribute a living thing rather than a plaque, pairing one of Sweden's most storied ensembles with a teenager who had not yet been born when Avicii first began performing.

• 4. A Home for Ice and Sport

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  Avicii Arena was built primarily as an ice hockey venue, and the sport shaped its calendar from the beginning. Among the first major events after the 1989 inauguration was the Ice Hockey World Championships. The arena went on to serve as the home rink for AIK, Djurgårdens IF, and Hammarby IF, three clubs whose Stockholm rivalry runs deep. Hammarby IF eventually played 20 home games at the venue. Huddinge IK came third, with three home games there, all in 1993. The arena also hosted a game for AC Camelen in 1998, in the sixth level of the league system, drawing just 92 spectators. On that occasion, the building built for 16,000 was nearly empty. Ice hockey was not the only sport, though. The venue also hosted futsal, the World Figure Skating Championships in March 2021 during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the Counter-Strike: Global Offensive tournament Major Stockholm 2021 in November of that year. Since 2000, the National Hockey League has brought regular-season and preseason games to the arena. In November 2019, the Buffalo Sabres and the Tampa Bay Lightning played two regular-season games there as part of the NHL Global Series. The Global Series returned in November 2023, this time with the Ottawa Senators, the Detroit Red Wings, the Minnesota Wild, and the Toronto Maple Leafs each playing two games.

• 5. Eurovision and Melodifestivalen

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  Melodifestivalen, the Swedish selection show for the Eurovision Song Contest, was among the very first major events at the arena after its 1989 opening. The Globe hosted the competition's final for decades, right up to 2012. Then in 2022, the show returned for the first three heats. Eurovision itself came to the arena twice, once in 2000 and again in 2016. The 2016 contest is notable for a small detail embedded in its official record: among the listed events for that year are three separate dates in May, catalogued as the Flag Parade, the main contest on the 14th, and a special broadcast called "That's Eurovision" on the 12th. The opening act for the 2016 contest was the winning song from 2015, "Heroes" by Måns Zelmerlöw, performed to welcome the world back to Stockholm.

• 6. Concerts and the Revenue Record

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  The arena's concert history reads as a compressed archive of popular music since 1989, with Pink Floyd's A Momentary Lapse of Reason Tour among the early performances followed by a long succession of global acts. U2's Elevation Tour in 2001 drew 31,511 attendees and generated revenue of $1,269,775. Their return on the Innocence + Experience Tour produced even larger numbers: 62,716 attendees across two nights and $6,850,151 in revenue, the highest figure in the arena's documented concert history. Britney Spears performed the Circus Starring Britney Spears tour there to an audience of 23,022 and $2,690,080 in revenue. Lady Gaga's Born This Way Ball in 2012 drew 27,477 attendees and brought in $2,848,530. Coldplay's Viva la Vida Tour reached 28,043 and 28,510 across two nights, generating $1,873,058. Beyonce's I Am... World Tour, by contrast, drew 10,640 on each of its two nights there, with revenue of $707,602. The venue also hosted Rush's Time Machine Tour, which drew between 5,637 and 10,764 across two nights for $456,028, the smallest revenue figure in the documented record. Rush is scheduled to return for a Fifty Something Tour, one of many future bookings listed in the arena's upcoming calendar.

• 7. The Cottage on the Globe

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  On the 26th of May 2009, a small aluminium cottage with a 12 square metre base was lifted to the top of the sphere. The artist behind it was Mikael Genberg, and his intention was to place two symbols of Sweden in conversation: the high-technology structure of the Globe and the traditional small countryside cottage painted in Falu red with white trim. The cottage was not placed at the exact summit but slightly off-centre. It stayed there until October 2009. Genberg had a further ambition beyond Stockholm. He hoped to one day place a similar cottage on the Moon, a project that had not yet been realised.

• 8. Skyview and What Comes Next

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  Opened in February 2010, Skyview is an exterior elevator system attached to the south side of the building. Two spherical gondolas, each holding up to 12 passengers, travel along parallel tracks on the outside of the Globe, carrying visitors to the top for a view across Stockholm. In June 2022, a renovation plan was confirmed that would take the arena through all of 2024. The work was designed to prepare the building to host the 2025 IIHF World Championship, a tournament to be jointly held with Denmark, and to support Stockholm's bid for the 2030 Winter Olympics. The NCC company received the renovation contract in July 2023. After the arena's scheduled reopening at the start of 2025, the neighbouring Hovet arena is set to be demolished, and the site is to become part of a new district called Soderhov. In 2027, the arena will host the group phase matches for the FIBA Women's EuroBasket, continuing a calendar that has now stretched across nearly four decades.