CNN —
With just five years and 11 months to go until the 2030 FIFA World Cup Final, the design for the stadium that will host the match has finally been unveiled.
Morocco's Grand Stade Hassan II football stadium, one of the three countries co-hosting the tournament along with Spain and Portugal, has been touted by designers Ouallou+Choi and Populous as potentially the “world's largest football stadium”, with a planned capacity of 115,000.
The stadium will be built on a 100-hectare (about 247 acres) site in the town of El Mansouria, north of Casablanca, and Populous said its design is reminiscent of a traditional “mucem,” a type of communal tent. The Grand Stade stadium will be made of an aluminum lattice that will cover the fans inside the stadium, the terraced gardens outside the stands, and a botanical garden on the first floor.
According to Tarik Oualalou, design principal and founding partner of Oualalou + Choi, the design is “deeply rooted in Moroccan culture with its traditional and contemporary expressions,” the press release states, “rooted not only in the Moroccan topography and landscape, but also in ancient primordial forms such as the mucem, tents and gardens.”
The configuration appears to be tailored for the FIFA World Cup events: the stand itself will be divided into zones at either end for general admission fans (each with a capacity of around 30,000), with the main section dedicated to boxes, hospitality, VIP and super VIP, according to the announcement.
“It will be a truly iconic and landmark venue for Morocco and for football itself and become one of the great stadiums in the world,” Populous EMEA managing director Christopher Lee said.
So how does Grand Stade Hassan II compare to other ridiculously spacious stadiums?
Cricket can claim the world's largest stadium is the Narendra Modi Stadium in Ahmedabad, India, which was expanded to a capacity of 132,000 in 2021, while the largest American football stadium is that of the NCAA's Michigan Wolverines, which seats more than 107,000 fans.
The world's largest football stadium is a multi-purpose venue and one of the most difficult to access stadiums in the world: the Yongdamdo May 1st Stadium in Pyongyang, North Korea. Opened in 1989, the stadium's official capacity is 150,000, but due to renovations in the 2010s, the stadium's capacity is now estimated to be just 114,000, according to research by the website Stadium Database.
Is it a coincidence that Grand Stade Hassan II will have 1,000 more seats? Probably not.
Populous is no stranger to building large-scale sports venues, having built London's Tottenham Hotspur Stadium and Emirates Stadium, as well as 12 Olympic venues and other stadiums around the world.
After five failed attempts to host the FIFA World Cup, Morocco has finally made a move. FIFA announced in October 2023 that Morocco will co-host the 2030 finals with Spain and Portugal. This is an unusually long tournament structure, with a commemorative match to be played in Uruguay, Argentina and Paraguay to mark the 100th anniversary of the FIFA World Cup.
The Grand Stade Hassan II's design team has stated that the stadium will be “fully compliant with FIFA competitions” and “capable of hosting the final” of the World Cup in 2030. A final decision on which site FIFA will select is still pending, but Real Madrid's newly renovated Estadio Santiago Bernabeu is widely expected to be the frontrunner.
According to Oualolou + Choi and Populous, groundwork has begun on the site outside Casablanca, meaning the spectacular design can be expected to come to fruition in the coming years.
