Dressing room and tunnel
The tour takes you into the home dressing room and out through the glass tunnel to the edge of the pitch - the part children remember.
Arne Müseler, cropped by Blackcat — CC BY-SA 3.0 de · Cléria De Souza — CC BY 2.0 · Arne Müseler from Salzburg, AT — CC BY-SA 2.0 · Arne Müseler from Salzburg, AT — CC BY-SA 2.0
No stadium in Europe carries a clearer Gulf fingerprint: an Abu Dhabi airline on the facade, Abu Dhabi ownership since 2008, and a team that turned a decade of Premier League dominance into a club exhibition of silverware for visitors to walk past. The ground was built for the 2002 Commonwealth Games and converted for football in 2003; officially it is still the City of Manchester Stadium, though nobody has called it that since the Etihad Airways deal in 2011. The news for 2026 is the North Stand. It opened in full for the final match of the 2025-26 season and was promptly renamed the Pep Guardiola Stand for the manager who left after ten years, taking capacity to just over 61,000. Everything around it is still a building site: a hotel of around 400 rooms, a new club museum and a covered fan park, scheduled to finish near the end of 2026. Expect hoardings and diggers on the north side, and ignore them - the south facade and the City Store are what you will photograph anyway. The tour is the real reason to come on a non-match day: the home dressing room, the glass tunnel, the dugout seats at pitchside and the press-conference room, over roughly 75 minutes of walking with some stairs. An adult ticket starts at £32, under-16s £20, under-fives go free, and everything is booked as a timed slot on the club website only. Tours start between 10:00 and 16:00; on home match days only shortened matchday tours run, from the City Store and no later than four hours before kick-off, so check the calendar before you plan the day. Summer is the easiest time: no matches, plenty of slots, manageable crowds. Getting there is simple: a Metrolink tram from Piccadilly Gardens to Etihad Campus takes about ten minutes, or it is a 25-minute walk from Piccadilly station along an uninspiring road. If you care about neither City nor football, a look at the exterior alongside the neighbouring Co-op Live arena and the store is enough - save the two hours for the rest of Manchester.
The tour takes you into the home dressing room and out through the glass tunnel to the edge of the pitch - the part children remember.
The new North Stand opened in full in May 2026 and lifted capacity to just over 61,000, though the hotel and museum around it are still being built.
Etihad's name and City Football Group's ownership give the place a particular resonance for a Gulf visitor, and the trophies in the club exhibition explain why.
Ashton New Road, Manchester M11 3FF
If you support neither club, Old Trafford offers more history and a museum inside the tour, while the Etihad is newer, glossier and less crowded in summer. If football leaves you cold, neither tour will change that - the exterior and the store are free and enough.
Hard but not impossible: tickets go first to Cityzens members and big games sell out fast, with general sale rare for the important fixtures. Cup ties and the women's team at the neighbouring Joie Stadium are far easier and cheaper, and the tram is packed before and after kick-off.