Dillinger heavy plate for the
Estadio Santiago Bernabéu

An icon reinvented

The Estadio Santiago Bernabéu is a place of legends that attracts many visitors. As home to Real Madrid, one of the most successful football clubs in the world, the arena was first opened in 1947 and regularly plays host to unforgettable sporting encounters. Following multiple phases of reconstruction work and extensions over the past decades, the most exciting project ever seen at the football temple got underway in 2019 – the transformation to become a multi-purpose arena that is unrivaled worldwide. For Real Madrid, only the very best solution was therefore good enough when it came to implementing the ambitious stadium redesign. This not only applied to all of the companies involved in the construction, but also the materials used. A good example of this is S690QL1 from Dillinger, a high-strength premium steel for lightweight steel structures. Despite never having been used in such quantities for a project of this kind, this material is what actually made the challenging roof structure of the Estadio Santiago Bernabéu possible.

The spectacular new stadium design is a joint development of Hamburg-based architecture firm Gerkan, Marg und Partner (gmp), Spanish project partner L35 Arquitectos, Ribas & Ribas Arquitectos, as well as the schlaich bergermann partner (sbp) engineering office and INES Consulting Engineers. Beside the sculptural facade, comprising sweeping diagonal stainless steel ribs with varying degrees of transparency, the retractable pitch, and a 360-degree LED screen that runs along the edge of the roof, the characteristic design elements of the new Bernabéu Stadium also include the seemingly “floating” roof structure with fully retractable inner roof.

Construction of the new roof structure without access to the interior

The Santiago Bernabéu Stadium is situated directly on a major transit route in the densely populated center of Madrid. Accordingly, one particular challenge for all companies involved in the renovation work was the original requirement of Real Madrid for the entire stadium construction works to be performed without disrupting the scheduled matches and also without any access to the stadium’s interior. The general contractor commissioned by Real Madrid therefore collaborated with a building contractor to develop a construction strategy involving assembly of the huge cross members required for the roof structure outside the stadium. The core element of this strategy was a six-meter-high temporary platform, positioned in front of the stadium entrance, on which all components of the roof cross members were pre-assembled.The spectators could then have simply walked through this like walking under a bridge when entering and exiting the ground. Although the COVID-19 pandemic then struck just a few months later, leading to cancellation of all matches, this construction strategy was still maintained.

For the roof of the Santiago Bernabéu Stadium our customer processed a total of 13,000 tons of steel, some 3,100 tons of which were S690QL1 increased-strength steel from Dillinger in sheet thicknesses of 10 to 120 millimeters.

Four cross members bear the entire roof load

A conventional system that uses four latticed main cross members made of steel which support the entire stadium roof was chosen. The main supports are the north and south cross members, each measuring six meters wide and spanning some 176 meters. These key elements of the roof also played a vital part for the entire assembly process. During the construction work, they made it possible to pre-assemble the other roof components on the platform outside the stadium. The two main cross members were produced in full from S690 increased-strength steel in a lattice structure and each weigh almost 1,500 tons. They rest on just four points, or rather columns, two of which were newly constructed.

Around a third of the entire roof structure at the Santiago Bernabéu Stadium was produced from S690 supplied by Dillinger. The steel grades S690 and S460 were combined in roughly equal proportions for the other two supports, the east and west cross members that span some 138 meters.