Camp Nou to Host the 2029 Champions League Final

Wembley was left wanting. UEFA's Executive Committee met this Tuesday in Thessaloniki, and there, on the table, the fate of one of the biggest dates on the soccer calendar was decided: the 2029 Champions League final will be played at Camp Nou. Barcelona's stadium beat out the English venue and will add a third major final to its history with the competition.

The date is already circled in red: June 2, 2029. Before that night, though, Barcelona has some homework to finish. Construction at the stadium is still underway and, for now, is on track. The club reopened Camp Nou's doors less than a year ago with a still-reduced capacity, just over 40,000 spectators, and since then that figure has already climbed to 65,000. The next step is bringing a third tier online, one whose base is already built, so capacity will keep rising.

There's one more chapter left to sort out in this project. Come summer, ahead of the start of next season, the team will have to move back, on a temporary basis, to the Olympic Stadium in Montjuic while the roof goes up over Spotify Camp Nou, the final phase of the whole project. The club's timeline calls for the stadium to be fully finished by early 2028, leaving a fairly comfortable cushion before that 2029 final.

UEFA also settled another open question at that same meeting: the 2028 final will be hosted by the Allianz Arena in Munich.

A stage with history of its own

Camp Nou is no stranger to these occasions. It has already hosted two finals that remain etched in the competition's memory. The first came in 1989, when Arrigo Sacchi's Milan routed Steaua Bucharest by a resounding 4-0. That night had its own headliners: Marco van Basten and Ruud Gullit each scored twice to crown the Italians champions.

Ten years later came, perhaps, the most memorable final in the competition's history. In 1999, Bayern Munich already had one hand on the trophy when Sir Alex Ferguson's Manchester United pulled off a comeback still spoken of as legend: they flipped the scoreline in just 102 seconds, with goals from Teddy Sheringham and Ole Gunnar Solskjaer.

Now, thirty years after that madness, the Catalan pitch will once again play host to a final. And with construction moving along on schedule, Barcelona has plenty of time to get its home ready and present itself to the world in the stadium it always dreamed of.