One hundred years of San Siro stadium · San Siro & dintorni – Stadio Ippodromi
San Siro under construction in 1926: four separate stands in the countryside, before the opening.
Where it begins · 1926 San Siro under construction, 1926, before the opening Author unidentified · Wikimedia Commons / Comune di Milano · PD-Italy

Saturday 19 September 2026

One hundred years,
six hundred metres from here

On 19 September 1926, in a field west of San Siro, a stadium opened with a derby: Milan–Inter 3–6. One hundred years later, to the day, the same ground celebrated by staying open until eleven at night, with people walking on the red roof beams fifty-five metres up.

From the crossroads of via Novara and via San Giusto it is six hundred metres north: up via San Giusto, to piazza Axum, and in. That distance holds this whole page together: the centenary is not football news, it is the birthday of a building at the end of a local street.

The birthday falls in a year when the ground has already been sold to the two clubs and is due for partial demolition once the new stadium is built on the adjacent site. The works are not expected before 2031. These two things belong together, because they happened together.

From the satellite · today

One hundred years on, the same ground

The 1990 third tier on the 1926 footprint. Four separate stands, then a single oval. All maps.

On the day itself

Sandro Mazzola dies, shortly after midnight

Inter’s announcement comes in the early hours of 19 September. He was 83. Seventeen seasons in black and blue, from 1960 to 1977, no other club shirt: four league titles, two European Cups, two Intercontinental Cups, the 1968 European Championship with Italy, the 1970 World Cup final lost to Brazil. He was the son of Valentino, captain of Grande Torino, who died at Superga in 1949.

He dies on the hundredth birthday of the stadium where he played his whole career. The Serie A weekend observes a minute’s silence at the request of CONI and FIGC; Inter play in Rome wearing black armbands. The funeral is on Monday 21 September at 14.45, in the Basilica of Sant’Ambrogio.

Appearances: 417 in the league, 572 in all competitions.

The day, hour by hour

What happened, and how it was corroborated

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Who owns it

Three owners in one hundred years

The stadium is born private, for Piero Pirelli’s Milan; for ninety years it belongs to the City of Milan; from November 2025 it is private again, owned by Milan and Inter together. The dates are the same as in the chronology below.

The tiers

How it grew, one tier at a time

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Capacity, according to the sources

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Bars in proportion. 1926 is a band because the sources give a range: the solid part reaches 35,000, the outline 40,000, and no midpoint is chosen.

Drawing

Four stages, from above

The same four stages as in the section above, seen in plan. Each expansion was built around the previous one, without demolishing it.

Not to scale · North at top
  1. 1926Four separate stands around the pitch.
  2. 1935–39The stands join in a continuous ring.
  3. 1954–55The second tier, above the first, with the spiral ramps outside.
  4. 1987–90The third tier, for Italia ’90, on eleven towers; the four corner towers carry the roof.

The century

Eleven dates, from building site to birthday

Only what the site documents elsewhere, in order.

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World Cups and European Championships

National teams at San Siro

Two World Cups and one European Championship pass through this stadium. Each time the stadium changes before hosting them: in 1935 the curved ends, in 1990 the third tier and the towers.

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European nights

Four finals of the biggest Cup

UEFA chose San Siro four times for the final of the European Cup, later the Champions League, between 1965 and 2016. Each time the city around the crossroads fills with fans from another country.

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One hundred years of evenings

What was seen inside, decade by decade

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Each square is an event checked against at least two sources. It is what the archive has already corroborated, not the complete list of what the stadium has hosted.

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What it was like inside

Five views, from the collection

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Archive footage

The stadium in the Luce newsreels

The Archivio Storico Istituto Luce holds newsreels on San Siro from 1928 to 1990. They are viewed on the archive’s portal, which holds the rights.

Video

The centenary match

On 20 September 2026, the day after the centenary, Milan–Lecce 3–0 with celebrations on the pitch.

The second life

Since 1980 it is also a concert venue

For more than fifty years the stadium was only the Scala of football. Then, on 27 June 1980, Bob Marley: until then concerts in Italy were held in indoor arenas of ten to fifteen thousand, and nobody had asked for a stadium. Since that evening two hundred and thirteen more have followed.

For the area, concert days are like match days: the same via San Giusto, the same tram 16 terminus in piazza Axum, the same six hundred metres on foot from the crossroads. Only where people come from changes.

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Where, on the day

The places of the celebration, from the crossroads

Everything that happened on 19 September lies within the same perimeter, six hundred metres from the junction. Orientation diagram, not to scale.

Curva Nord The stadium Skywalk Museum Sala Executive Curva Sud Via San Giusto 600 m Via Novara The crossroads North ↑
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From the photo collection

The stadium in photographs

All records in the photo collection.

Where it continues

  • The profile of Sandro Mazzola, who died on the day of the centenary, in In memoriam.
  • The chapter on the stadium, and the six hundred metres from the crossroads, in Stories.
  • The teams in the same ground in Derby, Milan and Inter.
  • Fixed dates in the area and upcoming events in Calendar.
  • Who has a birthday today, among those who played here, in Anniversaries.

Video

Inside the stadium

Sources for this page

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What this page rests on

Every fact is checked against at least two independent sources and, where one exists, the official source. Where they differ the primary source prevails; if there is none, the disputed detail is not written. The press review and the calendar are updated every day.

Whatever rests on a single source today stays out until it is corroborated. Community memories are published as memories, with the consent of those who tell them: Community. The criterion is set out in Method.