On Friday morning, President Ruto presided over the groundbreaking of Kenya’s newest international stadium, dubbed Talanta Sports City.
The stadium is expected to host some ACON 2027 games, and hopefully the opening ceremony or the final.
The new sports facility is purely a football grounds, with no running track as has been the norm with all our old stadiums. There will however be a separate uncovered outside pitch with a running track.
Talanta Stadium will be a 60,000 seat facility, located at Jamhuri sports ground. It features a change of design from the old ‘shield-like’ structure, to a more modern looking covered design, that lights up well at night.
The construction period as announced is from March 2024, to December 2025, making it just under 2 years. Since we are hosting AFCON in 2027, that should give the contractor some breathing space incase there are some unforeseen delays.
And speaking of contractor, China Road and Bridge Corporation (CRBC) will build the stadium, with supervision from the Kenya Defense Forces. Speaking at the ground breaking, the president said that he will personally visit the site every 3 months to inspect its progress.
The cost of the stadium has not been announced, but is believed to be in the billions of Shillings. Similar projects across Africa have consumed upwards of Sh30 billion.
Alassane Ouattara Stadium in Ivory Coast, the host of this year’s AFCON finals and also a 60,000 seater, cost $257 million (Ksh37.6 billion) 6 years ago. So it would be reasonable to expect Talanta to be in the same ballpark.
Here are photos of the new design.
And here’s how the stadium was initially supposed to look.
