Olympic Stadium

Come out of Olimpiiska metro and the stadium is right in front of you, which makes this one of the easiest sights in Kyiv to reach. The Olympic National Sports Complex is the home of Ukraine's national football team, though the team hasn't played here since the full-scale invasion, and it's the 16th largest sports venue in Europe.

If you want to see inside, plan ahead. Guided tours used to run on Wednesdays, Fridays and at weekends, and you had to book in advance - turning up on the day wouldn't get you in. Nobody is selling tours of the stadium at the moment, so ask the stadium whether they're running before you go. Outside of tours and match days there's not a great deal to do here beyond looking at it from the outside, so it's worth checking the fixture list before you make the trip. The Kyiv Fortress is directly behind the ground, and it's the better use of an hour if you've come this far and found the gates shut.

The Stadium's History

There has been a stadium on this site since 1923, when it was built over the former Red Stadium. Mikhaylo Grechina designed the Republic Stadium that followed in 1966, and it was expanded and modernised between 1968 and 1980. It took the Olympic name from the games held here and was given national status in 1996, when it became "Olympia". A renovation between 1997 and 1999 actually cut the capacity to 83,450.

Dynamo Kyiv played here until the late 1990s, when the club moved its league games back to its own Dynamo Stadium, a much smaller ground from the 1930s that's now named after Valeriy Lobanovskyi - they rarely filled more than 10,000 seats in a ground this size, so the smaller stadium made more sense, and the Olympic was kept for the big European nights. Up to 2022 the Olympic hosted the national team and big domestic fixtures, including the 2008 Ukrainian Cup final.

The version you see now dates from the rebuild for the 2012 European Football Championship. It re-opened in October 2011 with a Shakira concert. The old roof and various historical elements went, the upper tier was enclosed under a translucent laminated glass fibre roof, and the lower tier and the west stand were rebuilt completely. Before the full-scale invasion the capacity and the location meant it was used for concerts as often as football, so it's worth looking at what's on while you're in the city rather than assuming the gates will be open. Ocean Plaza is two kilometres south if you need feeding or somewhere dry before kick off.