2022 UEFA Champions League final: Saint Petersburg
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Saint Petersburg's Gazprom Arena will stage the final of the 2021/22 UEFA Champions League, with the game scheduled for 28 May 2022.
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The home of FC Zenit was originally slated to stage the 2021 decider, but on 17 June 2020, the UEFA Executive Committee decided to change the venues in line with the decision to hold the closing rounds of the 2019/20 competition in Lisbon.
The settings for the following two UEFA Champions League finals were confirmed at the same meeting:
2023: Football Arena Munich, Munich, Germany
2024: Wembley Stadium, London, England
The Gazprom Arena will therefore host its first UEFA Champions League final in 2022, with Istanbul's Atatürk Olympic Stadium fulfilling the role in 2021. It will be the third major UEFA club final played in Russia; Parma beat Marseille in the 1999 UEFA Cup final at the Luzhniki Stadium in Moscow, before Manchester United overcame Chelsea on penalties in the 2008 UEFA Champions League decider at the same venue.
Built to stage games at the 2018 FIFA World Cup, the Gazprom Arena stands a few hundred metres from the Gulf of Finland, on the site of the old Kirov Stadium – which held football matches at the 1980 Summer Olympics.
Modelled on Kisho Kurokawa’s Toyota Stadium in Japan, the spaceship-style arena has a retractable roof and a capacity in excess of 60,000. A crowd of more than 80,000 was accommodated for a 2018 ice hockey fixture between Russia and Finland.