San Siro Stadium Replacement and Sports District, Milan

A stadium that opened in 1926 is being replaced by one built next to it, and the old bowl keeps hosting matches until the new one is ready.

Milan city council approved the sale of the Stadio Giuseppe Meazza and the surrounding land to Inter and AC Milan on 30 September 2025 for 197 million euros. Foster + Partners is lead architect with the Kansas City studio MANICA, and the replacement venue is to seat 71,500.

Project Scope

San Siro was built for AC Milan by Piero Pirelli and opened on 19 September 1926. The city bought it in 1935. A second tier went on in 1955, taking capacity toward 100,000, and the Italia ’90 works in 1987-90 added the third tier, the eleven spiral concrete access towers and the cantilevered red girder roof designed by Giancarlo Ragazzi, Enrico Hoffer and Leo Finzi. Current capacity is about 75,800, shared by both clubs since 1947. It hosted the opening ceremony of the Milano-Cortina Winter Olympics in February 2026.

The clubs are to lodge the piano attuativo with the City of Milan in the first half of 2026, with first renderings from Foster + Partners and MANICA expected around the end of October 2026. Construction is scheduled to begin in the second half of 2027, with inauguration in December 2030 and demolition of the Meazza running April 2031 to May 2032. A portion of the second tier is proposed for retention on heritage grounds.

Around the venue sits a district masterplan of commercial, retail, hotel and public realm.

Costs above the purchase price are soft. Roughly 1.2 to 1.3 billion euros circulates for the stadium itself, sourced to the clubs and ahead of any tender, and no contractor has been named.

Why It Matters

The legal question that unlocked the sale was heritage. Italian listing protection attaches at 70 years, and the second tier was closing on that threshold, which is why the timetable moved when it did and why a carve-out for part of the tier is in the scheme.

Build-beside-and-then-demolish is the only sequence that works when the tenant can’t leave. It costs a full stadium footprint of adjacent land and it doubles the site logistics, but it avoids three seasons in a borrowed ground. Anyone replacing a full stadium on a constrained urban site is watching how the clubs handle the overlap.

Project Team & Details