The city hall allocates money from the budget for repairs to the National Arena » Amount offered in 2026: “It has deteriorated”

For 2026, the City Hall will have a total budget of 12.9 billion lei. And part of this amount will be redirected to the National Arena, the biggest stadium in the country, which belongs to PMB.

Bucharest City Hall wants to repair the National Arena

“The National Arena has deteriorated and we have allocated some money here as well. The cube no longer works. It is broken. And there are other repairs needed. We have already issued building permits”, said the mayor Ciprian Ciucu in the PMB meeting, when he presented his investment plan.

Concretely, the City Hall will allocate 3.1 million lei (approximately 600,000 euros) to fix certain problems at the National Arena.

Thus, the amount of 300,000 lei will be distributed for a feasibility study to make the above-ground parking accessible within the stadium. The car park has 1250 places and is not open all the time, but is only rented when different events take place at the stadium. In July 2024, the mayor at the time, Nicușor Dan, announced that “We are rebuilding the above-ground parking at the National Arena so that we can make it available to drivers”, but things have not evolved since then.

PMB will also offer 408,000 lei for a software license for ticketing and spectator access control for the turnstiles and the amount of 500,000 lei for the supply, installation and commissioning of the LED screens and the management platform for the electronic scoreboard, i.e. for the repair of the cube.

The largest amount, 2 million lei, will go towards technical expertise for deficiencies and degradations, i.e. for repairing the problems at the stadium.

The National Arena is deteriorating day by day

Gazeta Sporturilor has written several times about the major problems currently facing the biggest stadium in the country. From non-functioning elevators, to broken seats to destroyed boxes, fallen walls and infiltrations as much as possible.

For example, following the winter snows, the ceiling through which the water had infiltrated began to seriously crack. Water was leaking from the ceiling, the stadium literally flooded, and those with VIP seats would have had to stay with their umbrellas open for the entire duration of the match.

Furthermore, the seats in the VIP area are patched with duct tape to mask the holes, and the seats of several seats are coming off. And in the rest of the stadium the seats are missing, after the ultras broke them, and the municipality no longer had the funds to replace them. The discussion continues when we reach the cube in the middle of the arena, with four led monitors, the famous scoreboard that still lacks “pixels”.

Record revenues, but a historic hole in the budget!

The National Arena registered record revenues in 2025, but these pale in front of the mammoth expenses.

In terms of revenues, there was an increase compared to 2024, from 1.12 to 1.81 million euros (at the average exchange rate of 2025, of 5.0415 lei/euro). It is, by far, the most productive year since the opening of the Arena in terms of revenue. It is money from renting the stadium for 60 events: 48 were football matches, the rest non-sporting events.

The matches produced approximately 1.38 million euros, the non-sporting events approximately 432,000 euros. This means that a football match brought, on average, 28,750 euros to the accounts of the City Hall, while events unrelated to sports generated, on average, 36,000 euros.

A record is also recorded in terms of expenses for the maintenance and operation of the stadium. The related services and utilities cost 29.3 million lei, the euro equivalent of 5.81 million euros, 3.2 times more than the total revenues.

Ciprian Ciucu // PHOTO: Bucharest City Hall

Total expenses of the National Arena in 2025:

• Cleaning services – 2,940,984.84 lei

• Maintenance services – 7,436,611.64 lei

• Security and protection services – 4,346,578.69 lei

• Internet services – 31,450.76 lei

• Elevator maintenance – 82,049.45 lei

• Lawn maintenance – 7,850,994.77 lei

• Seat replacement – ​​308,626.50 lei

• Turnstile license – 252,184.31 lei

• Utilities – 6,090,013.43 lei

The National Arena needs to be managed more efficiently, possibly through concessions, because the state is not the best manager and the stadium is making big losses. The state is not the best administrator. The arena is underutilized and causing us losses. It costs us 30 million lei per year and brings us only ten million. We have a loss for the town hall of 20 million. We are considering a concession for one or two consortia to participate in a procedure. I don't have any apartment company. We have to make room for football, because that's what it was created for. The firm needs to assess maintenance costs and know where they are coming from.

The City Hall's objective is to stop degrading, the minimum objective is to reduce losses. With this money we can do a lot for Bucharest. Let it be thoroughly managed, let Bucharest be on the map of big festivals, host big matches. I don't expect profit in the first year. After the evaluation it will be seen what the problems are. Bucharest has good potential.

– Ciprian Ciucu, on April 3