This ranking orders the newest major stadiums, arenas, and large-scale venues by the year they opened, starting with the most recent addition and working back to 2016. It spans stadiums built for the NFL, NBA, NHL, MLB, and MLS, along with a handful of purpose-built concert and entertainment venues that changed what a big live event can look like.
Intuit Dome, the LA Clippers arena in Inglewood, California, is the newest entry, opening in August 2024. Only one year separates it from Sphere in Las Vegas, which opened in September 2023 and reset expectations for what an arena screen could be. After that, the list thickens fast: nine of the 25 venues opened in just 2021 and 2022, the tail end of a stadium-building boom that reshaped MLS in particular.
Intuit Dome and Sphere: the two newest venues on the list
Intuit Dome was built for one purpose: to be the Clippers’ home and nothing else. The $2 billion arena’s signature feature is the Halo Board, a double-sided ring display suspended over the court with roughly 38,000 square feet of LED screen and 230 million pixels, reportedly the largest halo-style display built into an arena. It’s paired with a dedicated supporters’ section, the Wall, stacked 51 rows behind one basket, a layout most arenas built for multiple tenants can’t replicate.
Sphere, in Las Vegas, isn’t a sports venue at all, but its scale earns its place near the top of this list. The exterior is wrapped in roughly 580,000 square feet of programmable LED, making the 366-foot-tall structure itself a giant screen visible from the Strip. Inside, a 160,000-square-foot wraparound display circles the audience at 16K resolution. U2 opened the venue with a residency in September 2023, and the interior screen has since become the building’s main draw for concerts and immersive films alike.
| # | Name | Opened |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Intuit Dome | 2024 |
| 2 | Sphere | 2023 |
| 3 | Energizer Park | 2022 |
| 4 | GEODIS Park | 2022 |
| 5 | Sharjah Safari | 2022 |
| 6 | Snapdragon Stadium | 2022 |
| 7 | Climate Pledge Arena | 2021 |
| 8 | Protective Stadium | 2021 |
| 9 | Q2 Stadium | 2021 |
| 10 | ScottsMiracle-Gro Field | 2021 |
| 11 | The Andrew J Brady Music Center | 2021 |
| 12 | TQL Stadium | 2021 |
| 13 | UBS Arena | 2021 |
| 14 | Allegiant Stadium | 2020 |
| 15 | Globe Life Field | 2020 |
| 16 | SoFi Stadium | 2020 |
| 17 | Chase Center | 2019 |
| 18 | Tottenham Hotspur Stadium | 2019 |
| 19 | Audi Field | 2018 |
| 20 | Fiserv Forum | 2018 |
| 21 | Elbphilharmonie | 2017 |
| 22 | Little Caesars Arena | 2017 |
| 23 | Mercedes-Benz Stadium | 2017 |
| 24 | Truist Park | 2017 |
| 25 | Golden 1 Center | 2016 |
How this ranking works
‘Opened’ here means the year a venue held its first public event, whether that was a concert, a preseason game, or a regular-season opener. That distinction matters because several entries, like Climate Pledge Arena in Seattle, are dramatic renovations of older buildings rather than ground-up new construction; they still count as newly opened once the rebuilt venue reopens to the public.
This list also isn’t a ranking of capacity, cost, or which venue is ‘best.’ A 70,000-seat football stadium and an 18,000-seat basketball arena sit side by side here purely because of when they opened. If you’re deciding where to catch a game or a show, opening year tells you how new the seats, sightlines, and technology are likely to be, not which venue is bigger or louder.
What stands out further down the list
The 2021-2022 stretch is dominated by soccer: TQL Stadium, Q2 Stadium, ScottsMiracle-Gro Field, Snapdragon Stadium, GEODIS Park, and Energizer Park all opened within a year of each other as MLS expansion pushed cities to build soccer-specific stadiums instead of sharing football fields. Sharjah Safari, opened the same year in the UAE, is the outlier on the list, a large-scale safari park rather than a stadium, included here for its scale as a major new venue rather than a sporting one. On the older end, Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg (2017) is a concert hall, not a sports venue, but its glass-and-brick silhouette made it one of the most talked-about new buildings of its decade, and Golden 1 Center (2016) is still cited as one of the first arenas built around solar power and LEED Platinum certification.
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Newest Major Stadiums and Venues FAQs
What is the newest major stadium in the world?
Intuit Dome, the LA Clippers’ arena in Inglewood, California, is the newest entry on this list, opening in August 2024.
Is Sphere in Las Vegas a stadium?
No. Sphere is a purpose-built immersive entertainment venue, not a traditional sports stadium, but it’s included here because of its scale and its 2023 opening, which makes it one of the newest major venues built anywhere.
Why did so many stadiums open in 2021 and 2022?
A wave of MLS expansion and new-franchise stadiums, including TQL Stadium, Q2 Stadium, GEODIS Park, and Energizer Park, opened in quick succession as soccer-specific venues replaced shared football stadiums in several cities.
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Photo by David Vives on Pexels.