Biggest Stadiums in Australia and New Zealand

The Melbourne Cricket Ground holds 100,024 — more than Eden Park and Wellington Regional Stadium put together.

It is the only ground in Australia or New Zealand to pass 100,000, and the largest in Oceania.

The ranking

Rank	Stadium	City	Country	Capacity
1	Melbourne Cricket Ground	Melbourne	Australia	100,024
2	Accor Stadium	Sydney	Australia	83,500
3	Optus Stadium	Perth	Australia	60,000
4	Lang Park (Suncorp Stadium)	Brisbane	Australia	52,500
5	Eden Park	Auckland	New Zealand	50,000
6	Sydney Football Stadium	Sydney	Australia	42,500
7	Wellington Regional Stadium	Wellington	New Zealand	34,500
8	Te Kaha	Christchurch	New Zealand	25,000

Capacities are permanent sporting configuration, which is the only basis on which these grounds can be compared like for like. Several hold considerably more with temporary seating — see below.

Why this list differs from others

Almost every ground here publishes more than one number.

Stadium	Published figures
Accor Stadium	83,500 · also 83,000 expandable to 115,000
Eden Park	50,000 permanent · +10,000 temporary ≈ 60,000
Te Kaha	25,000 permanent · 30,000 with temporary · 37,000 concerts

Rank on the higher figures and the order changes: Eden Park rises to joint third at 60,000, level with Optus Stadium, and Te Kaha climbs above nothing at all but looks 48% larger than it is for sport.

This is the single most common error in stadium rankings, and we have run into it in every region. The gap between Dortmund’s domestic 81,365 and its UEFA figure of 65,829 is the extreme case, covered in our guide to Signal Iduna Park capacity; Cardiff’s rugby capacity of 73,931 against roughly 78,000 for boxing is the same problem in miniature, in Principality Stadium capacity.

Ask which configuration a figure describes before comparing it to anything.

The Olympic legacy number

Accor Stadium’s second figure has a specific cause worth knowing.

Built as Stadium Australia for the 2000 Sydney Olympics, it has been reported as expandable to around 115,000 in that original configuration, against 83,500 today. The difference is temporary Olympic seating that was removed after the Games and permanent reconfiguration afterwards.

So a 115,000 figure for Sydney is not fiction — it describes a stadium that existed for about a fortnight in 2000. Quoting it as a current capacity is the mistake.

The same distinction applies to historic crowd records, where terraces held far more than seats ever will, covered in our guide to highest attendance records.

New Zealand’s newest ground

Te Kaha in Christchurch formally opened on 27 March 2026 — five months old at the time of writing, and absent from most rankings still in circulation.

It holds 25,000 permanently, 30,000 with temporary seating, and about 37,000 in concert configuration. That third figure is the one likely to appear in coverage, because concerts are what a mid-sized modern stadium is designed to attract.

It does not change the top of the table. It does mean New Zealand now has three grounds above 25,000 rather than two.

The regional shape

Australia’s stadium landscape is top-heavy in a way New Zealand’s is not.

Four Australian grounds exceed 50,000. New Zealand has one. The MCG alone is larger than any two New Zealand stadiums combined.

That reflects population and code structure rather than ambition: Australian rules football and rugby league sustain very large weekly crowds across multiple cities, while New Zealand’s rugby union calendar concentrates its biggest fixtures in Auckland.

For the wider picture, our rankings of the the UK capacity rankings and the Europe’s biggest grounds show how these figures compare internationally — the MCG would sit at the very top of either.

How we checked these numbers

The MCG’s 100,024 capacity and its status as the largest in Australia and Oceania, plus the Optus Stadium, Lang Park and Sydney Football Stadium figures, are from Sports Venue Guides’ Australian stadium rankings. Accor Stadium’s 83,500 and the 83,000-expandable-to-115,000 Olympic configuration are from Wikipedia’s Stadium Australia entry. Eden Park’s 50,000 permanent capacity plus 10,000 temporary seats and its status as New Zealand’s largest arena are from Wikipedia’s Eden Park entry, with Wellington Regional Stadium’s 34,500 and Te Kaha’s 25,000 permanent, 30,000 total and 37,000 concert figures and its 27 March 2026 opening from their respective entries.

Ranking is by permanent sporting configuration throughout. Where a ground publishes a higher figure with temporary seating or in concert mode we have given it in the text rather than the table, because mixing the two produces the disagreements this page exists to explain. A proposed Macquarie Point Stadium in Hobart is in planning; we have not included it, as no settled capacity is confirmed.

Review class: stable, with event-driven triggers — recheck on any published capacity revision, redevelopment, or the opening of a new major ground.