The Estádio da Luz, officially named Estádio do Sport Lisboa e Benfica, is a multi-purpose stadium located in Lisbon, Portugal. It is used mostly for association football matches, hosting the home games of Portuguese club (and owner) S.L. Benfica.
Opened on 25 October 2003 with an exhibition match between Benfica and Uruguayan club Nacional, it replaced the original Estádio da Luz which had 120,000 seats. The seating capacity was decreased to 65,647, and is currently set at 64,642. It was designed by HOK Sport Venue Event and had a construction cost of €118.7 million.
A UEFA category four stadium and one of the biggest stadiums by capacity in Europe (the biggest of Portugal), it hosted several matches of UEFA Euro 2004, including the final, and hosted the 2014 UEFA Champions League Final. In October 2014, it was elected as the most beautiful stadium of Europe in an online poll by French newspaper L’Équipe.
The previous stadium, which was also officially named “Estádio do Sport Lisboa e Benfica”, was named in honour of Igreja de Nossa Senhora da Luz (Church of Our Lady of the Light), and the people of Lisbon used to call it a Luz (“the Light”), so the common name for the stadium became “Estádio da Luz”, which is commonly translated to English as “Stadium of Light”, although inaccurately, because Luz refers not to “light”, but to the original address of the stadium: Estrada da Luz. The stadium is also referred to as a Catedral (the Cathedral) or o Inferno da Luz.
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