Wembley Stadium

• 1. Introduction

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  Wembley Stadium opened in 2007 atop a peculiar piece of buried history: when excavators dug down for the new pitch, their machines hit the concrete foundations of Watkin's Tower, a Victorian-era attempt to build a rival to the Eiffel Tower in London. The base had been abandoned and demolished in 1907, and the land then given over to what became the original Wembley. That layered ground now sits beneath 90,000 seats, the largest stadium in the United Kingdom. How a building this ambitious came to be built at all is a story of collapsed timelines, legal battles running into nine figures, a pitch that disgraced itself in front of the world, and a 315-metre arch that no other roof structure on earth can match.

• 2. The Troubled Build

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  The plan was to finish demolishing the old stadium before Christmas 2000 and open the new one sometime in 2003. Neither happened. Demolition of the original stadium's famous Twin Towers did not begin until December 2002, and the first serious warning sign for the construction project arrived in December 2003, when subcontractors Cleveland Bridge and Engineering Company of Darlington told main contractor Multiplex that costs were rising beyond control. Cleveland Bridge withdrew entirely, and Dutch firm Hollandia had to start the arch work over from scratch.

  The cascade of setbacks continued through 2004. A fatal accident involving carpenter Patrick O'Sullivan led to construction firm PC Harrington Contractors being fined £150,000 for breaches of health and safety laws. By late 2005, Sports Minister Richard Caborn was predicting the FA Cup Final would be held there, famously adding the caveat "barring six feet of snow or something like that." He was wrong. In February 2006 the FA moved the final to Cardiff's Millennium Stadium.

  On the 20th of March 2006, a steel rafter fell inside the unfinished structure, forcing 3,000 workers to evacuate. Three days later, sewers beneath the stadium buckled due to ground movement. GMB Union leader Steve Kelly blamed pipes that had not been properly laid, and said repairs would take months. On the 30th of March 2006, the developers confirmed the stadium would not open until 2007. The total cost, including local transport infrastructure and financing, was ultimately estimated at £1 billion.

• 3. The Arch and the Structure

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  The 133-metre arch above Wembley is not merely a visual signature. It is a circular-section lattice structure with a span of 315 metres, erected at 22 degrees off true vertical, and it carries all the weight of the north roof plus 60 percent of the weight of the retractable southern roof. The arch is the world's longest single-span unsupported roof structure.

  The numbers embedded in the rest of the building are just as striking. Four thousand separate piles form the foundations, with the deepest reaching 35 metres underground. The stadium used 90,000 cubic metres of concrete and 23,000 tonnes of steel. There are 56 kilometres of heavy-duty power cables running through it. The roof covers an area of 40,000 square metres, of which just under 14,000 square metres can slide open. The sliding sections exist specifically so sunlight can reach the grass; chief architect Angus Campbell said the aim was for the pitch to be in direct sunlight during matches played between 3 pm and 5 pm from May through June.

  The stadium also holds a less glamorous record: 2,618 toilets, more than any other venue in the world. The stadium circumference is one kilometre. At peak construction, more than 3,500 workers were on site simultaneously. Designed by Foster and Partners together with HOK Sport, now called Populous, the building was handed over to the Football Association on the 9th of March 2007.

• 4. First Matches and Records

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  The new stadium's competitive debut was a charity game on the 17th of March 2007, when the Geoff Thomas Foundation Charity XI beat the Wembley Sponsors Allstars 2-0, with Mark Bright and Simon Jordan scoring. The first match involving professional players, England under-21s against Italy under-21s on the 24th of March, finished 3-3 in front of an official attendance of 56,700. Italian striker Giampaolo Pazzini scored after just 28 seconds, the first goal in a FIFA-sanctioned match at the stadium, and he later completed the first hat-trick there.

  The FA Trophy Final on the 12th of May 2007 between Kidderminster Harriers and Stevenage Borough was the first competitive club fixture. Stevenage won 3-2 despite trailing 2-0 at half time, becoming the first team to win a final at the new stadium. Steve Guppy, playing for Stevenage, became the first player to win a final at both the old and new stadia, having previously won at the old Wembley with Wycombe Wanderers and Leicester City.

  The first FA Cup Final, on the 19th of May 2007, brought Manchester United and Chelsea together before a crowd of 89,826. Didier Drogba scored Chelsea's only goal in a 1-0 win, making him the first player to score in that final at the new ground and the first male player to score in four separate FA Cup Finals. The largest ever football attendance at the new stadium came the following year: 89,874 for Portsmouth's 1-0 win over Cardiff City, with Nwankwo Kanu scoring the only goal.

• 5. The Pitch Problem

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  Before the first full England international, the pitch had already attracted harsh words. Slaven Bilic, then coaching Croatia, called it "no good" and "not in the condition that Wembley used to be known for" before a November 2007 qualifier. That game cut up badly, and England failed to qualify for UEFA Euro 2008; head coach Steve McClaren lost his job. The Football Association admitted in April 2009, after the FA Cup semi-finals, that improvements were needed, following criticism from Alex Ferguson, Arsene Wenger, and David Moyes.

  By March 2010, the surface had been relaid ten times since the opening. After the 2010 FA Cup semi-finals, Tottenham manager Harry Redknapp called it a "disgrace" following his side's defeat to Portsmouth. Chelsea captain John Terry was equally blunt after the final: "The pitch ruined the final. It's probably the worst pitch we've played on all year." The stadium then switched to a Desso GrassMaster semi-artificial surface, and Michael Owen, who had previously blamed the pitch for an injury, acknowledged it was much improved. In 2023, Wembley switched to a carpet lay-and-play system.

• 6. Legal Fallout

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  Multiplex made significant losses on the Wembley project and responded by filing legal claims against its sub-contractors. The largest of these became the largest construction claim in UK legal history: a £253 million claim against structural engineering consultants Mott MacDonald. Foster and Partners and Populous, the two architecture firms involved, were ordered in preliminary hearings to allow Multiplex access to their records; both firms estimated this would cost them £5 million. Mott MacDonald countered with its own claim for £250,000 in unpaid fees.

  The dispute between Multiplex and Mott MacDonald was settled out of court in June 2010, before a scheduled January 2011 trial. Terms were not disclosed, though it was reported that Multiplex would not be out of pocket. A separate case against Cleveland Bridge, the original steel contractor, ended in September 2008 when Cleveland Bridge was ordered to pay £6.1 million in damages and 20 percent of Multiplex's costs. The judge criticised both sides for allowing it to reach court at all, noting that total legal costs reached £22 million, including £1 million spent on photocopying alone.

• 7. Sport Beyond Football

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  The Rugby League Challenge Cup Final had been held at the old Wembley since 1929 and returned to the rebuilt stadium in 2007. Catalans Dragons became the first non-English team to appear in that final, losing 30-8 to St Helens before 84,241 fans. In 2015, a second statue was unveiled outside the stadium depicting rugby league legends Martin Offiah, Alex Murphy, Eric Ashton, Gus Risman, and Billy Boston.

  Wembley's association with American football stretches back to a United States Football League game in 1984. The NFL first played a regular-season game in Europe at Wembley on the 28th of October 2007, when the New York Giants defeated the Miami Dolphins 13-10 in front of 81,176 fans; the first touchdown was scored on a run by Giants quarterback Eli Manning. The stadium later hosted the first NFL regular-season game to go to overtime outside the United States, a 27-27 tie between the Washington Redskins and Cincinnati Bengals on the 30th of October 2016. The game between the Jacksonville Jaguars and the New England Patriots on the 20th of October 2024 set a new record crowd for an NFL game at Wembley, with 86,651 in attendance.

  Boxing at the stadium opened on the 31st of May 2014 with the rematch between Carl Froch and George Groves, drawing 80,000 and setting a British post-war attendance record for a boxing event. Anthony Joshua's fight with Wladimir Klitschko on the 29th of April 2017 drew approximately 90,000. The record was later eclipsed by Daniel Dubois's victory over Joshua on the 21st of September 2024, before a record 96,000 spectators.

• 8. The Stadium as Concert Hall

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  George Michael gave the first concert at the new stadium on the 9th of June 2007. Bon Jovi, the last act to play the original Wembley, had been lined up to be the first at the new one, but the construction delays forced their shows to move elsewhere. Muse became the first band to sell out the stadium, on the 16th and the 17th of June 2007, and released a live DVD of the performances.

  The record for attendance at a UK music event was broken by Adele's concert on the 28th of June 2017, with 98,000 fans present; her planned final shows were cancelled on medical advice due to vocal injuries. Take That hold the record for most consecutive nights at the stadium, playing eight nights during their Progress Live tour in summer 2011. Madonna's 2008 show on the Sticky and Sweet Tour, before a sold-out crowd of 74,000, grossed nearly US$12 million, surpassing all prior gross revenue for a single concert at the venue.

  BTS became the first K-pop group to headline and sell out Wembley, doing so across two nights in June 2019. One Direction played to 246,000 people over three sold-out shows on the 6th to the 8th of June 2014 as part of their Where We Are Tour. Coldplay hold the overall record for most performances at Wembley with 22 shows, including 10 concerts in a single calendar year during their Music of the Spheres World Tour between August and September 2025.