Maracanã Stadium

Maracanã Stadium, association football stadium located in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, that was completed in 1950 and is the home stadium to the football clubs Flamengo and Fluminense.

The first impression on visiting Maracanã Stadium—named for the Maracanã River and sharing the name of its surrounding neighborhood—is its size. It is among the largest football grounds in the world, though its capacity has been significantly reduced over the years as a result of multiple renovations. When it was built for the World Cup in 1950, it could hold somewhere around 200,000 standing spectators. The final of that year’s World Cup between Uruguay and Brazil officially attracted 173,830 fans, although some estimates put the actual attendance closer to 210,000—a record attendance at a World Cup match and one that is unlikely to be broken. Brazil lost the game in a shocking upset, and football-mad Brazilians still remember the defeat as the Maracanaço (the Maracanã blow).

Maracanã Stadium—which was designed by seven Brazilian architects, including Raphaël Galvão and Pedro Paulo Bernardes Bastos—was renamed in 1966 in honor of the journalist who had campaigned successfully for the building of a new stadium for the 1950 World Cup. While the stadium has been primarily used for football, it has also been used for exhibition matches for other sports, and Pope John Paul II conducted three Masses here. The stadium is also a regular concert venue.

In 1992 an upper deck collapsed during a football match, killing three spectators, and over the next several years the stadium converted from holding only standing spectators to all seats, greatly reducing its capacity. A major reconstruction was undertaken beginning in 2010 that included a complete rebuilding of the seating bowl and the replacement of the roof. However, following its use for the 2014 World Cup and the opening and closing ceremonies of the 2016 Olympic and Paralympic Games the stadium briefly fell into disuse until it acquired a new administrator in 2017.

Maracanã Stadium is inextricably linked with one of Brazil’s and, indeed, the world’s greatest football players, Pelé. It was here that he made his debut for the Brazilian national team against Argentina in 1957, scored the 1,000th goal of his career in 1969, and played his last game for Brazil in 1971. Rio de Janeiro’s state legislature voted in 2021 to rename the stadium for Pelé, but the the bill was later vetoed.