For FC Barcelona, this Champions League night is about more than Feyenoord. It is also a reminder that Camp Nou is still not the finished project the club once expected to have back by now. What should have been a short interruption has turned into a long renovation, with cranes and workers still visible as the teams meet at 18.45 uur.
The scale of the delay makes the stadium story impossible to ignore. Preparatory works around Camp Nou began in 2022, and by the start of the 2023/2024 season Barcelona had moved to the Olympisch Stadion on Montjuïc as a temporary home. The plan had been to return by the end of 2024, but that timeline slipped. Barcelona eventually came back to Camp Nou on 22 november 2025, 909 days after their last match there.
Why the delay matters
The big issue is not just that Camp Nou reopened late. It is that the renovation is still far from complete. The third ring has been rebuilt, but the roof and some seating elements remain unfinished, and full completion is now expected only around begin 2028. In other words, this is not a stadium ready for a neat relaunch. It is a stadium being used while the work continues around it.
Edwin Winkels, the correspondent who has followed the project, said the original idea was simple: Barcelona would only be out for a short time before returning to a fully renewed ground within a year. That, he explained, was a miscalculation. He also pointed to the decision to sign a contract with a Turkish construction company while ignoring two Spanish giants, because the Turkish firm promised a faster turnaround. The result has been a much longer wait than planned.
The financial and physical scale of the project helps explain why. The renovation is reported at 1,5 miljard euro, and the work has involved major structural changes, including 48.000 m³ of concrete. That is the sort of investment that is supposed to reset a club’s future. Instead, it has also underlined how difficult it is to keep football moving while a flagship stadium is still under construction.
There is also a broader identity issue here. Camp Nou is one of the most recognisable venues in the game, and like the Sagrada Familia, it now seems to belong to a category of iconic Barcelona projects that take longer than anyone expects. Winkels said the only thing fans really found annoying was the long spell at the Olympisch Stadion, which suggests the emotional cost was real even if the team kept going.
So when Barcelona face Feyenoord, the story is not only about a Champions League match. It is about a club playing in a home that is back in use but still incomplete, and about a renovation that was meant to be brief but is still running toward begin 2028. The football is the reason people are there. The unfinished stadium is the reason this night feels different.
