Redesigning the Game: Preparing UK Stadiums for the Women’s World Cup 2035

Women’s football brings a different audience, and with it, a different set of expectations.

The fanbase includes a strong presence of families, a more balanced gender mix, and a matchday culture shaped by inclusivity, safety and accessibility. It is also characterised by a more relaxed and social atmosphere, where the overall experience extends beyond the 90 minutes of play.

At lower attendance levels, existing infrastructure can often absorb these differences. But at full capacity, they become much more visible and begin to affect how well a stadium actually performs.

Patterns of arrival, longer dwell times in concourses, and increased demand for facilities such as accessible toilets, baby change and family-focused amenities all place pressure on infrastructure in ways that were not originally anticipated.

Circulation, dwell time, facilities and wayfinding are not secondary considerations. They fundamentally shape the experience of attending a match.

Over time, these shifts begin to highlight the limits of stadiums that were designed with a different audience in mind.

Image source: WSL Stadium Design Guidance

The stadiums being considered for the World Cup have been developed to support the operational needs of the men’s game. This is reflected in how spaces are planned, how facilities are distributed and how the venue is organised overall.

Through our work on the Women’s Super League Stadium Design Guidelines, it became clear that the women’s game brings different patterns of use and behaviour, with practical implications for how stadiums perform.

Areas such as:

• concourse capacity and circulation
• toilet provision and accessibility
• family-oriented facilities
• wayfinding and perceived safety
• food and beverage distribution

are likely to be used in different ways and under different levels of pressure.

At full capacity, these elements start to shape how a stadium works and how people experience it.

Image source: WSL Stadium Design Guidance

Major tournaments often rely on temporary overlays to help venues meet specific requirements. These can play an important role in enabling existing stadiums to host events of this scale.

However, they have practical limits.

Space constraints, cost, and operational complexity all restrict what can realistically be delivered through temporary measures. Infrastructure such as toilet provision cannot always be meaningfully reconfigured without significant intervention.

This raises a fundamental question: how can facilities originally designed for a predominantly male audience support a more balanced and inclusive mix, without reducing capacity or compromising experience?

Temporary solutions can support delivery in the short term, but they cannot fully compensate for infrastructure that was designed around fundamentally different assumptions.

Increasingly, the challenge is not just to accommodate a single event, but to create venues that can adapt to different audiences, formats and expectations over time.

As stadia increasingly operate as concert and multi-event venues, audience gender balances are becoming more even, challenging the traditional assumptions that have long informed toilet provision. This shift raises an important question: should venues now provide a higher proportion of women’s facilities as a standard, or adopt more flexible solutions, such as ‘swing’ toilets, that can be reconfigured to suit different event profiles?

The Women’s World Cup 2035 represents a significant moment for women’s sport in the UK.

Making the most of it will require a considered approach, one that recognises the specific characteristics of the women’s game and responds to them through design.

Done well, this is an opportunity not only to deliver a successful tournament, but to demonstrate the UK’s commitment to women’s sport in a tangible way. It is also a chance to show how existing infrastructure can evolve to meet changing demands, and how major events can drive meaningful, long-term improvement.

Image source: WSL Stadium Design Guidance