1. FC Union Berlin

Union Berlin are the club that rebuilt their own stadium. In 2008 the Alte Försterei needed concrete, drainage, stairs and a roof over the terraces, and the club did not have the money, so more than 2,000 supporters turned up with shovels and put in over 140,000 hours of work themselves. The ground reopened in July 2009. Three years later, when the one seated stand needed funding, fans bought shares in it: 4,136 members and companies put in 500 euros each. That is why people in Köpenick talk about the place as theirs.

The club came out of East Berlin, founded in January 1966 as a works-backed club inside the East German sports system, sponsored by the state union federation and the Oberschöneweide cable plant, in the same month that BFC Dynamo was founded across the city under the Dynamo association tied to the interior-security organs. Football has been played on this ground since 1920, when Union's predecessor club in Oberschöneweide moved in. The rest of the club's identity is stitched to that working-class corner of the south-east: the nickname Eisern Union, iron Union, and an anthem recorded in 1998 by the punk singer Nina Hagen, who sang it live at the ground that November, before a Regionalliga game, when Union were two divisions below the Bundesliga.

What a visitor finds is a ground with terraces on three sides, one seated stand, and a scoreboard in the corner that two people operate by hand.

Getting there

Köpenick is a long way out, and that is part of the character. From Hauptbahnhof take the S3 toward Erkner as far as Köpenick, then walk about fifteen minutes along the railway embankment and down Hämmerlingstraße to the ground. Trams 60 and 67 stop at a halt actually called Alte Försterei, right at the stadium; you pick them up outside S Köpenick, and they are the easier option coming back, when the walk to the S-Bahn moves at the pace of the whole crowd. Landing at BER, take the S45 or S9 to Schöneweide and pick up the same trams; that journey needs an ABC ticket, because the airport sits in zone C.

The detail people get wrong: a Union ticket is not a transport ticket. Several German clubs bundle regional travel into the match ticket and Union do not, so buy your own fare, AB for anything within the city. Gates open two hours before kickoff for men's games, and given how the terraces fill, that is not a formality if you want a particular spot.

Making a day of it

The pre-match scene is the walk itself, because the route from the S-Bahn passes the pubs. Abseitsfalle on Hämmerlingstraße is the big Union bar, on the way in from Köpenick station and a fan meeting point since 1997; it takes no reservations on matchdays, so it is first come, first served. Tusches Kick & Rush on Am Generalshof is a football bar hung with the shirts of Torsten Mattuschka, the midfielder who is the closest thing this club has to a folk hero.

Make time for Altstadt Köpenick, ten minutes away on the tram, an old town on the water with a palace, a Baroque town hall and the statue of the Hauptmann von Köpenick, the unemployed cobbler who in 1906 put on a captain's uniform, marched a squad of soldiers into that town hall and confiscated the treasury. It is a better pre-match hour than anything nearer the stadium.

Inside, eat what the terraces eat. The charcoal grills do Bratwurst at four euros and Steak im Brötchen at four fifty, and the Suppenküche does a proper Erbsensuppe, thick yellow pea soup, for three, with a sausage in it for four fifty. A half-litre of Berliner Pilsner is six euros plus a two-euro deposit you get back with the cup, and if you have read elsewhere that beer at Union is four fifty, that price is a few seasons out of date. Card and phone payments work, and so does cash.

Inside, and where the noise is

The layout is simple once you know the club's own sector numbers. Sektor 1 is the Haupttribüne, the only seated stand, built in 2013 and holding 3,617. Sektor 2 is the Waldseite, the terrace behind the goal with the Wuhlheide woods at its back, and that is where the organised support stands and where the singing starts. Sektor 3 is the Gegengerade, the long side terrace opposite the main stand, which answers it. Sektor 4 is the Wuhleseite behind the other goal. Sektor 5 is Block Z, the away section, reached on foot along the path by the Wuhle stream rather than through the stadium car park.

The thing that makes the noise work is the geometry: three sides of standing, close in, under a roof, with a call and response going back and forth across the pitch.

This is the anthem and a full-ground choreo, filmed by the club:

Watch on YouTube ↗

If you are here in December, the Weihnachtssingen on the 23rd is the club's famous night: the stadium candlelit, a brass band, and the crowd singing carols. It started in 2003 with 89 people from one fan club and drew 28,500 in 2025, with people standing on the pitch itself. Tickets go to members by lottery, and the date and the ballot window for 2026 had not been published when this guide went up.

The songs

The anthem is "Eisern Union," written for the club and recorded by Nina Hagen in 1998, and it gets belted rather than performed. The call that runs through the game is simply the club's name thrown between the Waldseite and the Gegengerade, and you will see the shorthand U.N.V.E.U. on flags, which unpacks as "und niemals vergessen: Eisern Union", never forget. The origin story of the iron nickname, that it came from the metalworkers who made up the early support, is more legend than documented history.

Merch

The Union Zeughaus shop sits at the stadium on the Waldseite, with extra stands open on matchdays, and there are branches elsewhere in the city. The stadium tour is bookable through the club's ticket shop and is one of the few ways to get inside the ground without a matchday ticket.

Getting a ticket

Here is the section that decides whether you come, and the answer is unusually blunt: there is no general sale. The club's own ticket FAQ says day tickets for men's Bundesliga and DFB-Pokal home games are available only to members, and only through a lottery. Season tickets are members-only by rule. Membership costs 120 euros a year for an adult and buys you one entry per game, with every member's entry weighted the same.

The scale is the problem. Union have 71,958 members as of September 2026, and a 22,012 ground of which season-ticket holders already hold most. Regulars describe missing out routinely, and joining for a single trip is a poor bet: you pay for a year and get a lottery ticket. Day-ticket prices themselves are a bargain when you win one, at fourteen to sixteen euros to stand and thirty-three to forty-eight to sit, which tells you plenty about why demand looks like this.

So the routes that actually work for a visitor:

• A member transfers you a ticket. This is the legitimate one, and it is worth setting up properly: make yourself a free Union account first, because the member sends the ticket to an account rather than to a person, and the transfer then voids the original and issues a fresh one in your name, which is also what keeps you clear of the ID rule at the gate. Transfers close 150 minutes before kickoff. If you know anyone in Berlin with a membership, this is the ask.
• A women's Bundesliga game. Union's women play at the Alte Försterei and their tickets do go on open sale, online and at the ground, from about twelve euros to stand. Check the venue on the fixture itself, because women's games are not always at the main stadium, but when they are here you get the terrace and the setting without the lottery.
• A pre-season friendly, which the club says can go to open sale.
• The club's own Ticket-Zweitmarkt, its resale platform, is where members put back tickets they cannot use. Whether a non-member can buy there is not spelled out in the current FAQ and older club wording restricted it to members, so treat it as a members' tool until the club says otherwise.

What does not work is the grey market. Union name viagogo, Seatwave and StubHub specifically and say tickets bought there lose their validity, with no refund from the club. Tickets are personalised and the ground rules require you to carry official photo ID that matches. This is the rare case where the usual advice to buy through the club needs an extra sentence: at Union, the club will not sell a non-member a men's league or cup ticket at all, and no third party can legally fix that. If you are following a visiting club, the other open door is your own club's away allocation, which is how German away ends are filled. There is no European football here this season either, so no UEFA allocation to chase.

If you cannot get in, Berlin is a city with football everywhere, and the Germany trip guide covers the alternatives: Hertha are far easier to buy for, and the lower divisions here take walk-ups for the price of a sandwich.

One last thing

There is a clock on this one. The expansion is finally going ahead, and the club's September 2026 timetable has building starting in November 2027, Union moving to the Olympiastadion for around eighteen months, and a bigger Alte Försterei opening in summer 2029. That leaves roughly a season and a bit of football in the ground as it stands. After that the whole thing in this guide changes: a temporary home at the Olympiastadion means a much bigger ground and a different allocation, which is a kinder prospect for a visitor and a worse one for the atmosphere. If you can get someone to pass you a ticket, go now.

Ticket rules, membership numbers and the expansion timetable have all moved more than once; the schedule above dates from September 2026. Check anything time-sensitive the week you travel, and never buy from a resale platform the club has not authorised.