Inside a new stadium set to redefine the future of football | OneFootball

As Al Nassr and Al Hilal prepare to compete in one of football's most electric rivalries, the stage is being set for an entirely new chapter in Qiddiya City, and one that will unfold on the edge of a cliff.

On Tuesday, May 12, one of the most significant matches in recent Saudi Pro League memory will take place between Cristiano Ronaldo’s Al Nassr and their fierce Riyadh rivals Al Hilal, spearheaded by Karim Beznema. Victory for Al Nassr, in what will be their penultimate match of the season, will guarantee a coveted first league title for all-time great Ronaldo since his trailblazing move to the Kingdom in 2023.

The Riyadh Derby, one of the most ferocious rivalries in Asian football, has always carried immense cultural weight in Saudi Arabia. But in the years ahead, it is set to carry something else entirely: the full spectacle of a stadium the world has never seen before.

The Prince Mohammed bin Salman Stadium is rising from the upper plateau of Qiddiya City, 45 kilometres southwest of central Riyadh. This vibrant city, being built from scratch, will bring entertainment, sports and culture together in a way never seen before and will be home to over 500,000 residents. It will also be home to both Al Nassr and Al Hilal. And from the moment construction is complete on the new stadium, the derby will never look or feel the same again.

The numbers alone are striking. A capacity of 45,000, expandable to 58,500 for concert and combat sports events. A structure standing 170 metres tall from the lower plateau to its summit. The world's first venue to combine a retractable roof, retractable pitch and retractable west facade, all within a building perched, over the edge of a 200-metre cliff in one of the world’s best new city developments, Qiddiya City.

"We went through 37 different designs,” said Barry Bremner, Senior Executive Director of Sports Strategy at Qiddiya Investment Company. “The brief from His Royal Highness Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman was that it had to reflect the DNA of Qiddiya City; the world’s first city built for play anchored on entertainment, sport and culture. It had to be activated 365 days a year, and it should not look like a football stadium. The question we kept coming back to was: how do we create our Sydney Opera House, our Big Ben, our Eiffel Tower?"

The architects tasked with answering that question were Populous, the global design firm behind Tottenham Hotspur Stadium and many of the world's most ambitious sports and entertainment venues, including the Las Vegas Sphere.

Rhys Courtney, Senior Principal at Populous and a lead designer on the project, has been embedded with Qiddiya since before the city even had its current name.

"The site was chosen by leadership for a reason," Courtney said. "There is nothing else like it anywhere in the world. It isn't on the edge of the cliff; it is over the edge. We're building cores up the face of the cliff and spanning across them. There are parallels with bridge design, airport engineering, long-span structures, but bringing all of that together in this context has been unlike anything we've done before."

Construction is now firmly underway. Sixty percent of piling has been completed and the cores are rising from the resort core. The stadium will be a designated venue at the 2034 FIFA World Cup, hosting a quarter-final and the third-place playoff, though Bremner said that significantly undersells the role Qiddiya City will play in the tournament as a whole.

"People perhaps don't realise it's wider than just the stadium," Bremner says. "The game is played for 90 minutes. But the experience, that's something different entirely."

Twenty thousand square metres of activation space surround the stadium perimeter – a public realm designed to keep fans engaged for hours either side of kick-off. There will be competitive socialising venues, restaurants, hotels, and what Bremner describes as the world's only place to skydive inside a stadium.

The stadium sits alongside Qiddiya City's Gaming and Esports District, meaning the walk from the Q-Express high-speed train station, which is just a 17-minute journey from Riyadh, to your seat passes through one of the most immersive entertainment environments anywhere on earth.

"This is a destination where you can live, work and play without ever having to leave," Bremner said. "And that doesn't really exist anywhere else in the world."

The engineering audacity of the stadium is inseparable from its philosophical ambition. Qiddiya City is being built on the principle of the ‘Power of Play’. It’s the belief that sport, entertainment, and culture are not supplementary to a city's identity but central to it. The stadium is the physical embodiment of that idea.

“The question has always been: how do you use a stadium outside of match day? With the retractable roof, the retractable pitch, the retractable west facade, we have flexibility that no other stadium in the world has," Bremner said. The proposed event calendar reflects that ambition: approximately 70 football events per year, supplemented by a further 50 non-football events spanning sport, entertainment and concerts.

What makes this possible is technology. The exterior of the building is clad in LEDs, making the stadium a living, responsive landmark visible from across the city.

"Just say we're in the stadium, and at the same time, a motor race is taking place at the Speed Park Track. The whole stadium can turn into the colour of the winning car,” explained Courtney.

“This will be the heartbeat of Qiddiya City. It can respond to whatever is happening within the city." In the morning, it is a monument on the cliff. By night, during an event, it becomes something else entirely.

Crucially, the technology has been designed to evolve. Courtney is candid about the challenge: "We need to allow space for it to grow. The technology of today will not be the technology of 20 years from now. The wow moments we're creating now have to still be wow moments in 30 years' time."

The question of how to give two fierce rivals genuine identity within the same space is something stadium design has wrestled with for decades. Shared grounds have usually been the product of necessity rather than intention. The Prince Mohammed bin Salman Stadium is something different: a venue purpose-built, from the very first brief, to serve both Al Nassr and Al Hilal at the highest level.

"We are always trying to create absolute parity between the two clubs," Courtney said.

"Everything has been designed with an individual identity for both clubs. When Al Nassr are at home, the stadium goes yellow and blue, everything comes to life. The same for Al Hilal. And then when they play each other, that's the special moment."

The mechanism is elegant in its simplicity. Via a vast, interconnected LED and digital infrastructure, the stadium's entire identity can shift from one club to the other in minutes.

"Literally, you can flick a switch, everything changes," Bremner said. "It can move from an Al Hilal to an Al Nassr stadium almost instantly."

On derby day, Bremner believes that the real visual drama will come from playing one against the other: two identities, one stadium, split down the middle. Both clubs' training facilities will also be based at Qiddiya City, further anchoring their futures to the city.

Courtney sees the stadium as a connector. "It is a beacon on the cliff, a public art piece, and an active member of the city," he said. "Something that everyone orients themselves toward, whether it's the time of day, a show being put on with the lights, or it's just responding to what's happening around it."

Next week, Al Nassr and Al Hilal will do what they always do in front of a packed crowd: play for pride, for history, and for glory in the Saudi capital. But the ground is shifting beneath them.

When the Prince Mohammed bin Salman Stadium opens in Qiddiya City, the Riyadh Derby will have a new home; one that, like the city around it, is built to redefine the meaning of ‘play’.