Work may begin next year on the long-planned construction of an Albuquerque stadium to serve as the home to the New Mexico United soccer team.
The project will be built on the northeast side of the city on a seven-acre site at the Balloon Fiesta Park and will see the construction of a stadium designed to seat up to 10,000 people.
Earlier this year the Albuquerque City Council approved the issuance and sale of a $30 million Industrial Revenue Bond designed to fund the building of the stadium. At the same time, the team itself has committed to investing $40 million of its own funding for the project.
In July a district court judge dismissed a lawsuit challenging the authority of the city’s Environmental Planning Commission to approve the building of the facility. That lawsuit came after members of the Albuquerque City Council rejected the effort to stop the project.
That effort was spirited by a group of residents living in the vicinity of the Balloon Fiesta Park who said, among other things, that the presence of the stadium would cause both light and noise pollution, not to mention greatly increasing traffic in the area.
The New Mexico United soccer team was formed in 2018 and has played most of its games in the city’s Isotopes Park. The matches have regularly attracted upwards of 13,000 fans.
A survey conducted last year by Gallup listed soccer as the number four most popular sport in the U.S., behind football, baseball, and basketball, but ahead of hockey. The sport’s growing popularity has spirited the planned or completed construction of under 15,000-seat soccer stadiums everywhere from Rhode Island to Michigan, South Carolina, and Colorado.
October 17, 2025
By Garry Boulard
