BC Place Stadium

BC Place is the home venue for the Vancouver Whitecaps soccer team and BC Lions football team. The stadium also hosts concerts and other major events.

If you like professional sports, then this is one of Vancouver’s best places to visit at game time.

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BC Place Stadium

BC Place Stadium is in downtown Vancouver at 777 Pacific Boulevard. It can be accessed from Pacific Boulevard, but also from Beatty Street near Georgia and Robson. The stadium is also around a five-minute walk from Rogers Arena, the home of the Vancouver Canucks. It’s close to many hotels as well, including the Sandman Hotel Vancouver Downtown, the YWCA Hotel and The DOUGLAS.

Built for the Expo 86 world’s fair, BC Place is an impressive building with a capacity of about 54,500 people. Significantly renovated a decade ago, the stadium hosted the 2010 Olympics (including for the opening and closing ceremonies for the games). In 2015, BC Place hosted nine matches in the FIFA Women’s World Cup Soccer Tournament, including the final.

The stadium is divided into multiple levels with a lower bowl and an upper bowl. Both levels have concourses that wrap all around the stadium. The lower bowl has a capacity of up to around 28,000 people. For some sporting events, only the lower bowl is open. The stadium has a retractable roof, which makes it nice on warm sunny days, and the world’s second largest LED screen.

The venue is also home to the BC Sports Hall of Fame. The museum is very interesting, especially for BC and Canadian sports enthusiasts. There are a ton of cool artifacts and displays as well as interactive exhibits like a climbing wall and hockey target practice.

Re-opening and New Changes

New procedures at the stadium since the era of COVID include a 100% mobile ticketing system and completely cashless transactions. If you want to buy something within the stadium you need either card or mobile payment, or to purchase what is fundamentally a BC Place gift card which is then used at their concessions.

Because the stadium doesn’t want security searching through bags at the entrances, there is a new bag policy as well. The only types of bags allowed in are small purses (with a maximum size of 6.5 inches by 8.5 inches) or clear bags (up to 12 inches by 12 inches by 6 inches). All items that don’t fall into these categories must be held in a bag check while you’re inside the stadium.

BC Place has been newly certified by the Global Biorisk Advisory Council, an American company that specializes in helping facilities deal with potential infectious diseases. BC Place was the first Canadian stadium to receive the GBAC STAR accreditation.

Home Teams

While other sporting events are held in the stadium, BC Place has two main tenants. They are two of the three most popular sports teams in Vancouver, with the other being the Vancouver Canucks who play in Rogers Arena next door.

BC Lions Football – Vancouver’s CFL football team plays home games at BC Place from June until November.
Vancouver Whitecaps – Vancouver’s premier professional soccer team. Their schedule runs from spring until fall.

Events at BC Place

Many of Vancouver’s biggest and most impressive events take place at BC Place Stadium. They include things like the BC Home & Garden Show, Canada Rugby Sevens and More Than A Movie with Kids Up Front in the spring, plus professional sporting games with the Vancouver Whitecaps. In the summer and fall there more games with the Whitecaps as well as ones with the BC Lions. Last year BC Place hosted the 111th Grey Cup and Taylor Swift concerts. In 2025 there were the Invictus Games, and in 2026 the FIFA World Cup.

History of BC Place

With construction beginning in 1980, the stadium opened to the public in 1983. At the time of opening, the stadium’s roof was inflated by an air pump. This made its dome the biggest air-supported one in the world.

The stadium successfully hosted the opening ceremony of Expo 86. As the years went on, it became clear that the roof had issues. In both 1996 and 2007, snowstorms damaged it and forced significant repairs. The original roof’s last time in the spotlight was when the stadium hosted the opening and closing ceremonies for the 2010 Olympics.

A few months after the Olympic Games the roof was deflated, and in 2011, the stadium reopened with a new retractable roof made of steel. The new roof can be opened or closed in around 20 minutes. It’s now the largest steel retractable roof in the world.

The stadium has a 35-foot tall bank of LED lights that wraps all the way around the stadium. The place lights up every night with different colours. To the present day, BC Place continues to be the site used for all the biggest sporting events and concerts in the city.