September 16 – Barcelona’s rebuilt Camp Nou has beaten Wembley to the right to host the 2029 Champions League final, giving Barca an early marquee event for a stadium at the heart of its €1.5 billion Espai Barca redevelopment.
UEFA’s Executive Committee made the decision in Thessaloniki on Tuesday, awarding the 2028 final to Bayern Munich’s Allianz Arena before returning to Barcelona a year later. Wembley and Camp Nou were the only declared bidders for 2029 – and Spain beat England once again.
It will be the third European Cup final at Camp Nou, after 1989 and Manchester United’s famous late comeback against Bayern in 1999. That said, Barca’s rebuild has boosted the capacity of the mega-ground to around 105,000 and therefore massively increased the amount the club can make from hospitality, ticketing, catering, sponsorship and events.
The financing model behind Espai Barca is based on those additional revenues, which the club has estimated at around €247 million annually once the project is fully operational.
Landing European club football’s biggest match gives the new stadium exactly the sort of event the rebuild was designed to attract. It also arrives just a year before Spain co-hosts the 2030 World Cup with Portugal and Morocco.
Wales, meanwhile, came away from the same UEFA meeting with a significant prize of its own.
Cardiff’s 74,500-seater Principality Stadium – which will be called the National Stadium of Wales for UEFA purposes – will stage the 2029 Women’s Champions League final, beating bids from Dublin, Basel and Lyon. Lyon will host the 2028 edition.
Cardiff previously hosted the men’s Champions League final in 2017, while Cardiff City Stadium staged the women’s final that same year.
This award comes at a particularly useful time for the FAW, which has spent the past few years pushing hard to grow the women’s game. Female registered participation has climbed from around 13,000 in 2021/22 to more than 21,000 by the end of last season, while Wales reached its first major women’s tournament at Euro 2025.
FAW chief executive Noel Mooney said: “This is about much more than one night in 2029. Our ambition is for the UEFA Women’s Champions League Final to become a catalyst for the continued transformation of women’s and girls’ football in Wales.”
The FAW plans a legacy programme around participation, facilities, workforce development and audiences before and after the final.
Contact the writer of this story, Harry Ewing, at harry.ewing@insideworldfootball.com