Everton confirms its new £760m ground will open for 2025-26 season
Everton has announced that the club will play a complete season, from 2024–25, at its Goodison Park pitch, which has served as its home for more than 130 years. The club’s first competitive match at its new Bramley-Moore Dock ground is scheduled for the 2025–26 season.
Colin Chong, the club’s interim CEO, announced the news at a recent meeting with the Fan Advisory Board.
On the banks of the River Mersey, work is presently underway to create the £760 million, 52,888-seat stadium.
Everton expects to complete construction this time next year, but insisted its decision not to move mid-season is not due to any delays in construction, but to enable a range of safety testing events.
Mr Chong said: “I recently had the pleasure of attending a meeting with our Fan Advisory Board. While the committee summary of that meeting is available for supporters to read online, I wanted to give all Evertonians an explanation and some background on one of the key club decisions we confirmed directly with the FAB.
“This was assurance that our new stadium will host our senior men’s football team’s first competitive games at the beginning of the 2025–2026 season.”
“First, and to be absolutely clear, we did not decide to move in the middle of the season because of a construction delay,” he stated. The decision was made by the club based on a variety of factors, including business acumen, a thorough examination of the necessary logistics, an assessment of the possible effects on our football operations, and—most importantly—fan input gathered from our most recent stadium migration survey, which was answered by nearly 10,000 Evertons.
“Everton Stadium remains firmly on track, as scheduled, to be completed in the final weeks of 2024.”
He said the club will need to conduct test events at the ground, which will allow it to stress-test the stadium in a number of different ways to obtain a Safety Certificate.
Earlier this week Liverpool FC staged a test event with 7,000 fans to obtain a Safety Certificate to open up new sections of its Anfield Road stand extension in time for this Sunday’s (December 17) key match with Manchester United.
Mr Chong added: “Some of our test events will involve crowds of varying capacities, while others will need to be operationally focused and only involve our own staff.
“All of this indicates that we will be leaving Goodison Park at the end of the 2024–2025 season. Goodison will have served as our home for almost 134 years by the time we close the gates for the last time, and many of our supporters have made it very evident that they want to ensure the Grand Old Lady has a proper send-off.
In order to commemorate the milestone, he said the team will be able to plan a year-long calendar of events, tours, and celebrations for the final season at Goodison.
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