New 10,000-capacity arena planned for Finland

A new 9,800-capacity multi-purpose arena is slated to open in the Finnish town of Hyvinkää by the end of 2026.

The new venue will be built less than 30 miles from Helsinki, where the Russian-owned Helsinki Halli (cap. 15,500) has been mothballed since early 2022.

The estimated cost of the project is €45.6m, which will be shared by the City of Hyvinkää and Laurea University of Applied Sciences. The latter will benefit from a new campus hosted on the 13,000-square-metre site.

Finnish construction company SRV has been awarded a contract to build the Hyvinkää venue, with construction scheduled to start in spring 2025.

“The project has strategic significance for Hyvinkää as a whole”

The firm, which built Tampere’s Nokia Hall, is also developing a new 10,000-capacity arena in the southwestern city of Turku that will replace the Gatorade Center. The €100m Ratapiha Arena, operated by Turku Live, is scheduled to open in 2027.

Antti Nikkanen, property manager for Hyvinkää, says: “The arena project is an important vitality and urban development project that, when realised, will significantly increase the attractiveness of the city centre and the whole of Hyvinkää as the northern centre of the metropolitan area.

“The project has strategic significance for Hyvinkää as a whole. The arena has been in preparation for years and now we are happy when we move together with SRV and Laurea University of Applied Sciences to develop and implement the whole of the arena, which includes sports, event and college campus facilities of the future.”

Read more about Finland’s arena landscape, which also includes Lappi Areena in Rovaniemi (5,500), Espoo Metro Areena (8,582), and the Helsinki Ice Hall (7,000), in the Global Arena Guide 2024.

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