THEN AND NOW: What 10 former Olympic stadiums look like today

The Olympiastadion was built for the 1936 Summer Games. A different stadium was used when Berlin hosted the Winter Games earlier that year. 

After Germany was reunified in 1990, it wasn’t clear what Berliners would do with the stadium.

Eventually, it was renovated and reopened in 2004. It’s now the biggest stadium in Germany, has hosted the 2006 FIFA Men’s World Cup and the 2011 FIFA Women’s World Cup, and has been the home stadium for Hertha BSC since 1963.

Most recently, the 2024 UEFA Euro final was held at the Olympiastadion.

However, some of the other venues from the Berlin Olympics are abandoned, including the swimming hall and Olympic Village.

The Beijing National Stadium, or the “Bird’s Nest,” was built inside Beijing’s Olympic Green complex specifically for the 2008 Summer Games.

The National Stadium hosted the opening and closing ceremonies again in 2022 after a 14-year hiatus, according to the Olympics.

In the time since the 2008 Olympics, though, the National Stadium has hosted a handful of sporting events, such as car racing, and concerts, but not many. But the venue costs $10 million a year to maintain, the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) reported, so the city charges admission for tours.

The National Stadium’s first big event was the 1958 Asian Games. It remained a popular site for sporting events until it closed in 2014, and it even remained unscathed during the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami, The Associated Press reported at the time.

It cost over $1 billion to construct the new stadium, CNN reported. It’s now used by the national soccer and rugby teams.

The stadium has been nicknamed the “big O” by locals for its distinct shape … or the “big owe” for how much it cost the city at the time.

Montreal finally paid off its debts three decades after the Games wrapped, CFR reported.

The Expos moved to Washington, DC, and became the Washington Nationals in 2005.

In February 2024, Quebec’s government announced it would spend $870 million to redo the decaying roof, CFR reported. Without it, the stadium would have to close within two years. As of 2026, the work was underway, with an expected completion date of 2028.

The fields for equestrian events were already there, but the stands for the 30,000 spectators that day were constructed specifically for the Games and later removed, according to the Olympic Studies Centre.

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The 1984 Winter Olympics were held in Sarajevo, one of the biggest cities in Yugoslavia, a country that would break up and splinter into multiple countries only a few years later, in 1991.

After Yugoslavia broke up, Sarajevo became the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina. It was subsequently bombed and under siege for almost four years, destroying the original Zetra Ice Hall.

The Juan Antonio Samaranch Olympic Hall was rebuilt in 1999 with the help of a donation from the International Olympic Committee.

Other sites used in the Games have since been left to the elements.

The Atlanta Games, unfortunately, will always be remembered for the infamous bombing on July 27.

But after the Olympics, the stadium remained a huge presence in the city. It was shortly turned into Turner Field, home of the Atlanta Braves from 1997 to 2016.

After the Braves departed, Georgia State University acquired the stadium and redesigned it for their football team, the Panthers, who have called Center Parc home since 2017.

The stadium was originally designed and built in the ’80s so Athens could host the 1982 European Championships in Athletics, but it received a major renovation for the 2004 Games, including a new roof, according to the Olympics’ website.

While some other Olympic venues have seemingly remained untouched since the 2004 Games, the site of the opening and closing ceremonies is quite busy.

However, in October 2023, there were concerns that the roof had become unsafe, Reuters reported, and the stadium was closed until May 2024. Just a few weeks later, Coldplay played two shows in the newly restored stadium.

Fisht Stadium was specifically built for the 2014 Winter Olympics. It was built as an enclosed facility. 

This renovation was in preparation of Russia hosting the 2017 FIFA Confederations Cup, and then the 2018 FIFA World Cup. The capacity of the venue can now be changed from 45,000 to 25,000 depending on its use, according to its engineering consultants Buro Happold.

Additionally, Russian soccer team PFC Sochi plays at Fisht.

Soccer and track-and-field events were also held in Maracanã Stadium, which was originally built in 1950 to host the FIFA World Cup, according to Britannica.

The stadium held the finals for the 2021 Copa América — an international competition between men’s soccer teams in South America — in July 2021. The Copa América finals were also played in Maracanã in 2019.