Today, August 12 marks exactly 100 years since the most important sports facility in Ukraine — the National Sports Complex "Olympic" in Kyiv.

On this day in 1923, competitions of the first Olympics of Kyiv were held on the arena. In 1924, a football field measuring 120x70 meters was built at the stadium. Running tracks were laid around the perimeter of the external field, and changing rooms and showers were also installed.

At the beginning of the 1950s, for the first time a wooden scoreboard appeared above the southern gates. In the summer of 1954, construction of the main facade of the stadium — a colonnade with an administrative entrance to the internal courtyard — was completed. These columns became the trademark of the stadium.

In 1956, four 45-meter metal towers equipped with 320 grid-patterned floodlights providing a total illumination level of 500 lux were built on the arena. From that time onward, football matches in Kyiv could be held at night.

The second general reconstruction of the stadium began in 1966. The project involved constructing a second tier of stands, which was mounted for the first time worldwide on original reinforced concrete double-arched girders. The two-tier bowl of the stadium was designed to accommodate 100,062 seats.

According to this project, a press complex was built above the upper tier of the western stand, where commentator booths were mounted on high supports, and a ski jumping ramp was constructed. Two new electronic scoreboards measuring 18x6 meters were also installed.

The third major renovation and reconstruction of the Central Stadium took place in 1977 due to the decision to involve Kyiv as a host city for the football tournament at the XXII Summer Olympic Games in 1980.

Ahead of the 1980 Olympic football tournament, the stadium returned its historical name — Republican. From July 20 to 27, 1980, matches involving teams from Algeria, Iraq, Spain, Costa Rica, GDR, Syria and Finland were held at the stadium.

In 1996, the stadium received its current name — National Sports Complex "Olympic". During the reconstruction in 1998, due to the installation of individual seats, the capacity of the stadium was reduced to 83 thousand.

The last renovation of NSK "Olympic" began in August 2008 as part of preparations and hosting the final stage of the UEFA European Championship 2012. The first match at the renovated stadium took place on November 11, 2011. It was a friendly match between Ukraine and Germany (3:3). The game was attended by 69,720 spectators.

Three group D matches of the Euro-2012 tournament (the first one being the opening match in Group D — Ukraine vs Sweden), a quarter-final and a final were held at the stadium. On July 1, 2012, the gold medal match took place where Spain defeated Italy by 4:0.

Photo courtesy of UAF

On September 15, 2016, at the UEFA Executive Committee meeting in Athens, NSK "Olympic" was chosen as the venue for the final match of the Champions League-2018. The game took place on May 26: Real Madrid defeated Liverpool with a score of 3:1.

In addition to this, the stadium hosted matches in qualifying tournaments for World Cup and European Championship, Nations League, UEFA club competitions (including the final of the UEFA Super Cup in 1975), other international competitions, national tournaments at all levels.

Notably, finals of the Ukrainian Cup were usually held here — in 18 seasons. Symbolically, that the first match after the resumption of Ukraine's championship from the start of full-scale war last year («Shakhtar» — «Metalist 1925») took place precisely at NSK...

We hope that this historic stadium will continue to serve Ukrainian football and host many more historical matches and events for years to come.

National Sports Complex "Olympic"

(multi-purpose sports arena for hosting football matches, track and field competitions, cultural entertainment and other mass events)

Photo courtesy of UAF

Stadium capacity— 70,050 spectators.

Press seats— 1,497.

Field size— 105x68 meters.

Sector count— 80.