Der Klassiker

Der Klassiker has a split personality. The away end is one of the biggest in European football, and the home ticket is about as hard as German football gets. Both are true at once, and which one applies to you depends entirely on who you're travelling with.

The away end is enormous, and that's genuinely unusual

Start with the number, because it reframes everything. The away section at Dortmund holds close to 8,000, the largest in the Bundesliga, and clubs with a serious travelling support take the lot. Bayern are one of them.

It's worth holding that against the rest of Europe. The Seville derby gives visiting supporters a few hundred. In Italy the away end can be closed outright by the Interior Ministry. In the Netherlands the away allocation for the big fixture ran to 700, on a compulsory bus. Here it's eight thousand, standing.

At the Allianz Arena the away section holds around 7,500, high in the upper tier. So whichever way the fixture falls, several thousand travelling supporters get in. If you follow either club, this is among the most accessible away days in the European game.

The home ticket is the hard part

Now the other side, and the page would be dishonest without it.

Dortmund sell roughly 55,000 season tickets into a ground holding 81,365. Bayern sell about 38,000. Take the season tickets and the away allocation out of Signal Iduna Park and what's left for everybody else, on the biggest home fixture of the year, is a fraction of the building.

Supporters asked directly about getting into a Klassiker give a consistent answer: it's gone through official channels, the club resale platforms are open only to members, and for this particular game almost nobody gives up a seat. The honest summary from people who've tried is that you can get in if you'll spend hundreds of euros, and not otherwise.

So the realistic routes for a neutral are official hospitality, or accepting a price well above face value, and going in clear-eyed about which one you're doing. Buying direct is still the right instinct; it just runs out of road earlier here than at an ordinary Bundesliga game.

The Yellow Wall, and what you can actually get

One naming point first, because it matters and gets mangled constantly. The ground is the Westfalenstadion, officially Signal Iduna Park. The Yellow Wall is the Südtribüne, the south stand, not the stadium. It holds 24,454 standing and is the largest terrace in European football.

Standing on it for a Klassiker isn't a realistic plan. For a midweek league game against mid-table opposition it's a very different proposition, and our Dortmund guide covers how to do exactly that. If this fixture is the one you want, aim for a seat facing the Wall rather than a place on it.

The away end is the Nordtribüne, the north end directly opposite, also standing. One practical detail from supporters who work these away trips: standing places in the away end go first and seated allocation lingers, so if standing has sold out, check again for seats before giving up. And if you're thinking of joining a club as a route in, note that a new membership typically can't be used in the members' pre-sale window for around a month after it's accepted, which makes it a plan for next season rather than this one.

At Bayern, the noise comes from the Südkurve, the standing home end behind the south goal. The honest caveat is the one in our Bayern guide: the Südkurve is superb and much of the rest of the Allianz Arena is a good deal quieter than its reputation suggests.

About the name

Worth knowing if you want to sound like you've been paying attention. Der Klassiker is a recent coinage, modelled directly on El Clásico, and it took hold around 2013, when Bayern and Dortmund knocked out Real Madrid and Barcelona and met each other in the Champions League final at Wembley.

German supporters are often blunt that the label oversells the history. The clubs first met in 1965, when Bayern reached the Bundesliga, and the deep local rivalry in Dortmund is the Revierderby against Schalke, not this. None of that makes the fixture small. Bayern lead the head-to-head 70-33 with 37 draws from 140 meetings, and these are the two biggest crowds in German football. It just means the name arrived long after the football did.

Practicalities

Both grounds are straightforward to reach, and in Dortmund your match ticket includes regional public transport on matchday, so getting to the stadium costs nothing extra. Beer is served in your seat or on the terrace throughout, which is a genuinely different matchday from an English one.

The fixture alternates between the two cities each season, and kickoff times land later than the dates do, which is worth knowing before booking flights.

Sources

• Die Falsche 9's Bundesliga away-support data for the roughly 8,000-capacity away end at Dortmund, the largest in the league, and for the clubs that sell it out.
• bvb.de for the Südtribüne's 24,454 standing capacity and the 81,365 matchday capacity of the stadium.
• German season-ticket reporting (FCBinside, Neunzigplus, OneFootball) for the 2026-27 totals: about 55,000 at Dortmund and 38,000 at Bayern.
• Allianz Arena away-section references for the roughly 7,500 visiting capacity in the upper tier.
• Wikipedia's Der Klassiker entry for the origin of the name around the 2013 Champions League final, the criticism that the fixture lacks the historic rivalry of other German derbies, the first meeting in 1965, and the 140-match head-to-head.
• Supporter community discussion at both clubs for the availability picture, the members-only resale platforms, and the away-end detail that standing sells out ahead of seating.

Allocations, season-ticket totals and sale windows are set fresh each season. Check the home club's official ticket information the week you travel, and buy through the club.