Barcelona will leave Camp Nou, again It will happen next season

Barcelona will have to leave Camp Nou once again as the club moves into the final stages of the stadium’s renovation. The news was confirmed by Ferran Olivé i Cànovas, Barcelona’s vice president, who explained that the Blaugrana will finish the 2026/27 season at Camp Nou, but will have to play their home games elsewhere for at least the first half of the 2027/28 campaign. The return is currently expected in January 2028.

Why does Barcelona have to leave Camp Nou?

The final stage of the renovation involves installing a roof covering the entire stadium and pitch. The issue is that, according to The Athletic, the roof has been designed to be installed from inside the stadium, meaning that all the necessary construction materials would have to be brought onto the pitch. That would make it impossible for Barcelona to continue playing there while the work is underway.

This phase of the renovation is expected to begin in May 2027, immediately after the team’s final home game of the season. Once it is completed, the stadium’s capacity will increase from the current 62,000 seats, with only two tiers open to the public, to 95,000. By then, the third tier of the stadium will also have been completed.

The precedents

Barcelona has confirmed that it has already reached an agreement with the Barcelona City Council to rent the Estadi Olímpic Lluís Companys on Montjuïc, a stadium the club already used during the 2023/24 and 2024/25 seasons. The Olympic stadium was originally opened in 1929 and was completely renovated ahead of the 1992 Summer Olympics. Today, it has a capacity of around 45,000 for football matches.

During their previous spell away from Camp Nou, Barcelona also played two La Liga matches at Estadi Johan Cruyff, the 6,000-seat ground normally used by the club’s women’s team and academy sides. Those two matches were played there in September 2025 because Camp Nou had yet to receive the necessary approval to host games, while Barcelona had also failed to renew its agreement to rent the Lluís Companys in time. The Olympic stadium was occupied at the time by Post Malone, who was scheduled to perform two concerts there.

Camp Nou will host the 2029 Champions League final

Barcelona’s current plan is to return to Camp Nou no later than January 2028, but the club’s bigger objective is to have the entire renovation completed by 2029. This is because UEFA has selected Barcelona and Camp Nou as the venue for the Champions League final in 2029.

If the renovation is completed as planned, the stadium’s final capacity could reach 105,000 spectators, in line with the figure initially presented by the club when the redevelopment project was unveiled. The final cost of the works, however, remains another question. In 2014, the renovation was initially estimated at €600 million, but according to the latest figures reported by The Athletic, taking into account the loans recently requested by the club, the total cost could rise to as much as €2.6 billion.