The sign is explicit: “Home tournament: Barcelona-Athletic. 22/11/2025“Barça returns to the Camp Nou, the old stadium now popularly called the new Camp Nou and officially Spotify Camp Nou, never in any case Nou Camp. A very special Saturday after the exile of Montjuïc, known as the mountain of calvary by those who have no longer seen the Barça team on the pitch since 28 May 2023, when they beat Mallorca with Ansu Fati scoring and Xavi on the bench of the Camp Nou. The return to the stadium afterwards two and a The semester is announced as a historic date and, therefore, the price of the tickets is also exceptional: from 199 euros to 1,500 in any case there have been no fights for the ticket because many culés are still waiting for the Camp Nou to return to being the Camp Nou.
It is not very clear when the more than 100,000 usual spectators will enter, whether in 2027 or 2028, because the third stand and the roof remain to be built, and it is already known that it took much longer than expected in a renovation that envisaged a progressive arrival of spectators depending on the progress of the excavators: 26,000, 60,000 and 105,000. The current capacity is 45,401 fans, similar to that of the Lluís Companys stadium, which varied between 45,000 and 50,000. The moment invites us to talk about the culé militancy that will become fundamental in the coming months, when president Joan Laporta will call elections between March and June 2026. The members are once again around 140,000 and the season ticket holders amount to 21,186 out of a total that is close to 80,000.
There are thousands of Barcelona fans still on holiday, the club needs money to start paying Goldman Sachs and Laporta wants the best showcase to be re-elected after returning to office in 2021. The delay became a never-ending story until the value shown at the start of the work was devalued in a period of great difficulty for Barça. The variability and depersonalisation of the project – Laporta was thinking of Norman Foster in 2007 – was so evident that the notion of what degree of remodeling the Camp Nou required was lost. The opening of the doors will allow us, for now, to jog our memories and notice the captivating and familiar character that the new FC Barcelona stadium maintains and its attachment to the city: Les Corts, Maternidad, Diagonal and Travessera.
That field built in 1957 by the architect Francesc Mitjans is a protected heritage site for its innovative character and its elliptical and solemn shape, always recognizable in the first two stands, which support the past additions – the expansions by Núñez – and presumably future ones – those made by Limak. For the Barcelona fan it will be as easy to find his place again as it is to get excited and angry because paying for a season ticket will no longer necessarily mean having the seat of his life at a time when stadiums tend to stop being the cathedrals of parishioners and become televisions full of fans and VIPs. Now the inspection phase begins: checking access, comfort and visibility, so that the word spreads and as the days go by everyone knows what awaits them at the new Camp Nou.
Adjustments and returning to deadlines complicate social activation after a phase of demobilization that neither facilitated the desire to maintain singularity globally nor helped Flick’s team. The merit of the coach and the players was enormous when last season they won the Championship, Cup and Super Cup and were semi-finalists in the Champions League, from the cold Montjuïc, an area more suitable for tourists than for Barça fans. Many of the players who will play today against Athletic have not yet played at the Camp Nou. Lamine Yamal was only on the pitch of the old stadium for seven minutes in a match against Betis played in April 2023 and Flick was a spectator and not a coach in the Barcelona stadium. The Montjuïc generation will discover the new Camp Nou today.
Maybe it would be nice if they immediately knew the difference between one stadium and another, how different the music sounds and how the ears ring, how rivals get smaller and teammates get bigger when the club’s name is recovered, even if the room temperature depends on the scoreboard and the fans only surrender on designated days and on visits to Real Madrid. Barça must recover the field factor to also be the best Barça. It doesn’t seem so complicated if you take an old acquaintance like Messi as a reference. Nothing is more inspiring for Barcelona fans than the curiosity, enthusiasm and emotion shown by the number 10 in his recent solo visit to the new Camp Nou.
