Events

Sports events

The VELTINS-Arena is, of course, first and foremost synonymous with FC Schalke 04 and its home matches in the Bundesliga, DFB Cup, Champions League and Europa League. But the multifunctional arena also offers a unique setting for sporting events in NRW.

Biathlon at Schalke has been taking place here since 2002, and the Biathlon World Team Challenge has become a permanent fixture in the sports calendar with its date just before the end of the year. The mixed competition not only offers a unique backdrop in the snow around the arena, but is also attended by well over 40,000 spectators year after year. The sporting event is a unique experience for the biathletes, who compete on a 1.2-kilometre course and complete their shooting runs at a specially constructed shooting range in the stadium.

The two-person teams, each consisting of one man and one woman, alternate round after round. The biathlon at Schalke is always an absolute highlight of the year for the international field of participants and the numerous spectators. Since 2014, the snowball fight world championship has also been part of the World Team Challenge's supporting program.

The VELTINS-Arena has also hosted numerous other sporting events. The opening game of the 2010 Ice Hockey World Cup between Germany and the USA even set a world attendance record at Schalke with 77,803 spectators. The VELTINS-Arena has also hosted boxing matches between Vitali and Wladimir Klitschko and the 2004 Champions League final between AS Monaco and FC Porto.

However, the portfolio of sporting events in NRW that have already made their mark in the VELTINS-Arena goes even further: TBV Lemgo and THW Kiel battled it out in front of a world record crowd in the opening match of the 2004 Handball Bundesliga, Stefan Raab hosted his TV Stock Car Crash Challenge for a whole decade and American football has also been played in Gelsenkirchen. In 2018, the German Darts Masters also took place in the arena - here, too, the result was a new spectator world record.