VELTINS-Arena - Schalke 04

Veltins-Arena (originally Arena AufSchalke ) is a football stadium in Gelsenkirchen, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It opened in 2001, as the new home ground for German Bundesliga club Schalke 04.

It hosted the 2004 UEFA Champions League final and 5 matches in the 2006 FIFA World Cup, including a quarter-final. It has a league capacity of 61,482 (standing and seated) and an international capacity of 53,951 (seated only). The stadium has a retractable roof and a retractable pitch. The naming rights to the stadium were sold on 1 July 2005 to the German brewery Veltins.

Plans to construct a new stadium emerged in the late 1990s, as fans and managers sought to move out of the outdated Parkstadion, and create a thoroughly modern multifunctional arena. Following Schalke 04's historic 1997 victory in the UEFA Cup, and the club's upcoming 100th anniversary in 2004, the contract to construct a €186 million stadium was given in 1998 to the German construction firm HBM.