Paris Will Host This Year's Champions League Final

This year's Champions League final will be held in Paris, at the Stade de France, after UEFA moved swiftly to remove Russia as hosts.

The final this year will be held on May 28th and was originally meant to be played at Zenit St Peterburg's home ground, the Gazprom Arena.

That stadium's title sponsor is the same as the main sponsor for the tournament but UEFA moved quickly on Thursday, after Russia declared war on Ukraine, to decide not to host the final there.

On Friday an extraordinary meeting of UEFA's executive committee decided that France's national stadium would instead host the final.

It is the first time since 2006 that the country has hosted the final, when it was the same venue, in which Barcelona beat Arsenal, to become European champions for only the second time.

Barcelona won the Champions League last time it was held in France. Image: PA Images

UEFA president, Aleksander Ceferin, travelled to Paris on Thursday to meet with French president Emmanuel Macron to talk about the move to the Stade de France.

According to the New York Times, officials in Britain had lobbied privately for the final to moved to London but there were a number of issues.

The League Two play-off is already set to be played at Wembley on that date, whilst The Tottenham Hotspur Stadium will host rugby league's Challenge Cup final on the same day.

However, a clash of dates was not the only problem, the report claims that UEFA were worried about the game being used for political gain by the British government.

Earlier in the week the foreign secretary, Liz Truss, had called on English clubs to boycott the final in Russia, if they managed to reach it.

The Stade de France was built for the 1998 World Cup, which France won. Image: PA Images

England will not have to wait too long to host the Champions League final again, having done it most recently in 2013, as Wembley is already set to host in 2024.

It is the third time in-a-row that the final has had to change hosts, after the previous two years were affected by Covid and were moved to Portugal.

Turkey's Ataturk Stadium was due to host last year and is in line to hold the final next year, it seems unlikely that Russia will be allowed to take that spot.

Topics: Champions League, Russia, France

Ryan Sidle

Ryan is a journalist for SPORTbible with over eight years of experience. Passionate about all sports, he mainly covers football and F1 - Daniel Ricciardo once spent an entire interview referring to him as 'Ryan Gosling,' still his proudest moment.

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