Shakhtar Donetsk Seeks a London Home, Eleven Years After Leaving Its Ukrainian Stadium

Eleven years without setting foot in its own home. That's how long Shakhtar Donetsk's soccer exile has lasted, a club that hasn't played an official match at its Donbas stadium since 2014 and is once again on the hunt for a new borrowed home. This time, the search leads to London.

According to sources consulted by ESPN, the Ukrainian club's leadership is working on a deal to host its European matches in England this season. The preferred option, per those same sources, is Stamford Bridge, Chelsea's stadium, which holds 40,000 fans. Fulham's Craven Cottage and Brentford's Gtech Community Stadium were also considered, though nothing has been signed yet.

While that agreement gets finalized, Shakhtar already knows where it will play: Stamford Bridge itself, which sits open during European match dates because Chelsea's first team failed to qualify for any continental competition this season.

A History of Borrowed Stadiums

To understand why a Ukrainian champion ends up playing in west London, you have to go back to May 2, 2014, the last time Shakhtar played a match at its Donbas Arena. Shortly after, Russian-backed separatists took control of the region, and the club began a nomadic existence within its own country, hosting matches in Lviv, Kharkiv and Kyiv.

Russia's full-scale invasion in February 2022 forced the club to take things a step further: moving its European matches entirely outside Ukraine. Shakhtar ended up playing its "home" games in Warsaw and Krakow, Poland, in Ljubljana, Slovenia, and in Hamburg and Gelsenkirchen, Germany. None of that was home, and every match meant grueling logistics: long bus rides from Ukraine, sometimes combined with a flight, for both European matches and domestic home games alike.

That routine is exactly what the club hopes to leave behind this season. The idea of settling in London, instead of continuing to shuttle between cities and countries, reflects the need to find something resembling stability, even if it's thousands of miles from home.

For now, the arrangement with Chelsea serves as a stopgap while a more permanent deal is negotiated among the three English options on the table. The club, meanwhile, still cannot play at its own stadium in eastern Ukraine, and there's no sign that will change anytime soon.