Buy Athletic Bilbao tickets for the 2026/27 La Liga season and you are buying into the most unusual club in European football. Athletic Club field only players born in or developed in the greater Basque Country, a policy running unbroken since 1912, and they have never been relegated from La Liga in 96 consecutive seasons. No other club in the world combines those two things, and it is the reason San Mames sells out for fixtures that would leave gaps elsewhere.
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This is also a season of change. Edin Terzic took charge in July 2026 on a contract to 2028, ending Ernesto Valverde's decade in the dugout across three separate spells. The club finished twelfth last season on 45 points, exited the Champions League at the league phase and lost a Copa del Rey semi-final, which leaves 2026/27 as a rebuilding year under a coach with no previous connection to the Basque Country.
What follows covers what a seat at San Mames actually costs, why the season ticket waiting list runs past 8,500 names, which stand suits which kind of supporter and which fixtures close out within hours. Every league fixture, home and away, has its own page linked at the foot of this one.
Athletic operate a socio system that is closed in practice to anyone outside the region. Members hold their seats indefinitely, renewals are near-universal and the waiting list for a season ticket had passed 8,500 names by spring 2026, which is why the club approved a stadium expansion rather than waiting for turnover to solve the problem. Nothing about that structure is designed to accommodate a supporter flying into Bilbao for one weekend.
The seats that reach general sale are what remains after members have taken theirs, released a few weeks before each match. For a Tuesday fixture against a mid-table side there is usually something. For Real Sociedad, Barcelona or Real Madrid there is very little, and it disappears in the time it takes most travelling supporters to notice the window has opened.
Resale exists because that timing suits almost nobody outside Biscay. Flights to Bilbao and a hotel in the Casco Viejo are booked months ahead, long before the club knows its kick-off slot. Buying a released member's seat first and building the trip around it reverses a sequence that otherwise leaves visitors gambling on a sales window they cannot plan around.
1BoxOffice has operated as a verified secondary marketplace since 2006, covering close to two decades of Spanish football including Athletic's Copa del Rey win in 2024 and their return to the Champions League. Orders are checked rather than simply listed, sellers are vetted before inventory goes live and delivery is tracked from confirmation through to matchday.
Sellers set their own prices, which can sit above or below face value depending on the fixture, the stand and how close kick-off is. The protection attached to each order does not vary, which matters when you are committing to a seat in a stadium where general availability is genuinely scarce.
San Mames fills for reasons that have little to do with where Athletic sit in the table. The connection between this club and its region is closer than at any comparable side in Spain, and it produces a demand pattern that survives bad seasons intact.
The pressures below combine differently depending on the opponent and the point in the calendar. A Basque derby in February behaves nothing like a Monday night fixture against a promoted club in October.
Read together these describe a market where the constraint is genuine rather than manufactured. Athletic finished twelfth last season and still averaged crowds close to capacity, which tells you that waiting for form to soften demand is not a strategy that works here.
Pricing at San Mames sits in the middle of the La Liga range and moves less dramatically than at the Madrid or Barcelona clubs, because Athletic have fewer fixtures that attract genuinely global demand. What the market does have is a hard floor of local demand that keeps even quiet fixtures from bottoming out, and four or five dates a season that jump well above the norm.
Stand carries real weight here. The ground is a four-sided bowl of three tiers with the Tribuna along the main side, the Preferencia opposite and the north and south ends behind each goal. The upper tier is steep and gives an excellent overall view, while the lower tier puts you close enough to hear the play. Corner positions sit between the two on price and angle.
Timing works against latecomers more than at most clubs. Because the season ticket base absorbs so much of the ground, releases arrive in a trickle rather than a wave, and a fixture that looks available in September can have nothing listed by March. For the derbies in particular, buying early is not a way of saving money so much as a way of getting in at all. The ranges below reflect typical resale pricing rather than face value.
| Type of Ticket | Typical Price Range (GBP) |
|---|---|
| La Liga (standard fixtures) | £45 – £170 |
| La Liga (Basque derbies) | £100 – £420+ |
| La Liga (Barcelona and Real Madrid) | £95 – £460+ |
| Copa del Rey (early rounds) | £25 – £85 |
| Copa del Rey (later rounds) | £60 – £260 |
| Hospitality / VIP | £300 – £1,400+ |
Prices reflect typical resale ranges and may change as demand and availability shift.
Yes, though Athletic's socio system makes the club's own channels harder to use than at most clubs. Members hold seats indefinitely and pass them within families, renewals are effectively automatic and the waiting list had grown beyond 8,500 names by the time the club approved its stadium expansion in April 2026. Joining that queue is not a realistic route in for a visitor planning a trip this season.
The general sale that follows the member window is small and opens only a few weeks before each match. It works well enough for a lower-profile league fixture where members have released seats in numbers, and it works poorly for the four or five dates a season everyone wants. There is no shortcut through membership either, because the seats are not the constraint; the people already holding them are.
The secondary market solves the problem directly. Seats released by members reach the open market, which removes the waiting list from the equation entirely and means no requirement for a Spanish address, a local payment method or a trip timed around a club sales window. It also spreads availability across all four sides of the ground rather than concentrating it wherever the club happens to have inventory left.
A season ticket at San Mames is a family asset rather than an annual purchase. Holders keep the same seat across decades, the renewal window in summer is treated as a formality and the transfer of a seat between generations is a genuine event in a household. That is why a club representing a city of roughly 350,000 people can sustain a 53,331-seat stadium and a five-figure waiting list at the same time.
The club prices the pass to keep it within reach, which is part of the same philosophy that produces the squad. Set against nineteen home league fixtures plus cup football, the annual outlay compares favourably with what a season of Premier League football costs, and holders receive priority on away allocations and cup tickets on top of the saving.
| Season Pass Area | Typical Annual Range (GBP) | What It Covers |
|---|---|---|
| Upper tier, behind the goals | £340 – £520 | The highest and most affordable seating in the ground, with a full view of the pitch from behind the goal |
| Lower tier, behind the goals | £450 – £700 | Close to the action at the ends, and where the noise is generated on derby days |
| Preferencia, upper and mid tiers | £600 – £950 | Side-on seating opposite the dugouts with a clear view across the pitch |
| Tribuna, outer blocks | £800 – £1,300 | Main stand away from the halfway line, closer to the tunnel and the technical areas |
| Tribuna, central blocks and premium | £1,200 – £2,200+ | Halfway-line positions on the main side with the widest range of included facilities |
Ranges are indicative and may change from season to season depending on the club's pricing structure.
San Mames was designed with sightlines as the priority, and it shows. The three tiers are stacked steeply enough that there are no genuinely poor viewing positions, and the roof covers every seat. The differences between areas here are about atmosphere and proximity rather than about whether you can follow the game.
| Stand / Area | Best For | Price Bracket | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| South end, lower tier | Atmosphere and singing | Lower to mid | Where the organised support gathers with flags and drums. Standing for long stretches, and the section that starts the chants the rest of the ground picks up. |
| North end, lower tier | Proximity behind the goal | Lower to mid | The opposite end, quieter than the south with a straight-on view of one penalty area. Also the area nearest the visiting allocation. |
| Tribuna, central blocks | Clean view of the game | Upper | Main stand at the halfway line, closest to the benches and the tunnel. The most sought-after seats in the ground and priced accordingly. |
| Preferencia, mid tier | Side-on view at mid price | Mid | Opposite the dugouts and elevated enough to read the shape of the game. Popular with regulars who want the angle without the Tribuna premium. |
| Upper tier, sides | Overall perspective | Mid | Steep and high, with a complete view of the pitch and the whole bowl. The clearest sense of what San Mames looks like when it is full. |
| Corner sections | Balancing price against view | Lower to mid | Angled across both penalty areas and frequently the last seats available for a sold-out fixture. Better value than the position suggests. |
Athletic take a substantial travelling support to almost everywhere, and the regional fixtures in particular are treated as extensions of the home calendar. The Reale Arena, Mendizorrotza and El Sadar are all within two hours by road, which puts three away days a season inside a comfortable day trip from Bilbao. Season ticket holders receive priority on away allocations, ranked by seniority.
| Away Matchday Factor | What to Expect |
|---|---|
| Standard allocation | La Liga grounds generally set aside around 5 per cent of capacity for visiting supporters, though the figure varies by venue and by the risk classification attached to the fixture. |
| Typical location | Upper corner or upper goal end, segregated with a separate entrance and concourse. At San Mames itself, the visiting allocation sits at the north end of the ground. |
| Access requirements | Allocations are distributed through the club to season ticket holders first, ranked by seniority. Photo identification matching the ticket is commonly requested for fixtures classified as high risk. |
| Home-section listings | Many away-day supporters end up in home areas. That is workable at a quieter ground and a poor idea at the Reale Arena or the Camp Nou, where visible away colours in a home block invite relocation. |
| Transport and timing | Spanish kick-offs run late, with 9pm starts common at weekends. Bilbao has an international airport and good rail links, but a finish after 10.45pm rules out same-night onward travel from many cities. |
Treat each away fixture as its own piece of planning. Confirm the kick-off slot before booking travel, check which block a listing sits in and dress neutrally if you end up outside the designated visiting section.
Supporters come to San Mames for different things, and a stadium this well designed gives you a real choice rather than a compromise. Someone travelling for the noise of a Basque derby has different needs from a family adding a match to a weekend in Bilbao. The table below maps the common priorities.
| Priority | Best Option | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Atmosphere | South end, lower tier | Where the organised support congregates with flags and drums, and where the singing starts. Expect to be standing for much of the ninety minutes. |
| View of the game | Tribuna central or upper tier, sides | The main stand at pitch level for detail, or the upper tier for the full shape of the game. Both give a far better read than a position behind a goal. |
| Families and first visits | Preferencia, mid tier | Seated throughout, calmer than the ends and with straightforward concourse access. Every seat is covered, which matters given how much it rains in Bilbao. |
| Premium experience | Tribuna central and the hospitality areas | Halfway-line positioning with catering and dedicated entrances. Priced well below equivalent packages at the largest Spanish clubs. |
| Lower-priced entry | Upper tier behind the goals | The most affordable seats in the ground with an unobstructed view. The height is steep but the sightline is clean from the very back row. |
The current San Mames opened on 16 September 2013 on a site immediately beside the ground it replaced, which had carried the name since 1913 and had been known as La Catedral for most of that time. The nickname transferred with the club, and it is used without irony in Bilbao. Designed by IDOM with Cesar Azkarate as project manager, the stadium cost 211 million euros, roughly half of which came from Basque public institutions.
It seats 53,331 across three steeply stacked tiers, with every seat covered by a roof extended in 2016. The exterior is wrapped in a skin of translucent panels that light up in the club's colours, which has made it one of the more recognisable buildings on the Bilbao skyline alongside the Guggenheim. Details of the current layout and matchday arrangements are set out on the San Mames stadium page.
The ground has hosted more than league football. It staged the 2025 Europa League final, in which Tottenham Hotspur beat Manchester United 1-0, along with the 2024 Women's Champions League final and the 2018 European Rugby Champions Cup final, which set the venue's attendance record at 52,282. It was also selected as a Euro 2020 venue before the pandemic moved those fixtures to La Cartuja. A club museum opened on site in 2017.
Expansion is now under way. In April 2026 the club approved a 5.2 million euro project to add around 2,700 seats and take capacity towards 55,771, achieved through narrower seats, tighter row spacing and new rows at the top of the upper tier. Because the work cannot fit into a summer break, it is being carried out across the season around match days, which means the exact configuration may shift slightly as the campaign progresses.
Getting there is close to effortless. The stadium sits across the road from the Termibus regional bus station and has its own Santimami station serving the metro, the tram and commuter rail, so almost any point in greater Bilbao connects within half an hour. From the Casco Viejo the metro takes about ten minutes, and walking along the river from the Guggenheim takes around twenty-five.
The pre-match routine is one of the better ones in European football. Supporters gather along Calle Licenciado Poza and Calle Ledesma, two streets of pintxos bars a short walk from the ground, working through plates of bacalao, gilda and txakoli before heading in. Bilbao is a genuinely serious food city, and building two hours into the plan before kick-off is a better use of an afternoon than arriving early to sit in your seat.
On matchday the ground opens well ahead of kick-off and the transport links mean queues at the turnstiles build later than at grounds where everyone walks in. Because the three tiers wrap the pitch continuously and block numbering runs around the bowl rather than by stand, it is worth checking exactly where a listing sits against the San Mames seating plan before you buy rather than after.
Hospitality at San Mames is built into a stadium designed for it from the outset rather than retrofitted into an older structure. The offering centres on the Tribuna side, where the club has lounge, dining and box facilities, and the pricing sits well below what equivalent packages cost in Madrid or Barcelona.
The practical value for a visiting supporter is twofold. It is a route into fixtures where general availability has closed, and it is a way of turning a match into a longer evening in a city where the food is a genuine part of the attraction. The ranges below reflect typical resale pricing rather than a fixed schedule.
| Package | What It Includes | Typical Price Range (GBP) |
|---|---|---|
| Premium seating | Padded seat in a central Tribuna position with a dedicated entrance and access to a shared lounge before the match and at half time. | £300 – £550 |
| Lounge package | Central seating plus catering built around Basque produce, a bar and a longer lounge window either side of kick-off. | £500 – £900 |
| Fine dining package | Seated multi-course dining before the match, halfway-line seating, table service and post-match lounge access. | £800 – £1,500 |
| Private box | Enclosed box for a group with its own catering, dedicated host and a private viewing area over the pitch. | £2,000 – £6,500+ per box |
| Derby and marquee fixtures | Any of the above applied to a Basque derby or a visit from Barcelona or Real Madrid, where demand raises the rate sharply. | £700 – £2,800+ |
Hospitality inventory is committed early by local corporate buyers, so for a specific date it pays to look several months ahead rather than in the final weeks.
Buying through a marketplace is straightforward once you know what each stage is doing. The sequence below runs through a complete purchase, from finding the fixture to the ticket arriving, with the checks worth making at each point.
Step1
Find your fixture
Start from the fixture lists at the foot of this page and open the match you want. Each fixture has its own page with live listings, so you are always looking at availability for that specific date rather than a general pool.
Step2
Set up your account
Browsing needs no sign-in, but completing a purchase and following the order afterwards does. It takes under a minute to create an account, and having one ready before a derby appears matters at a club where released seats arrive in small batches.
Step3
Filter by stand and budget
Narrow listings by area of the ground and by price before comparing anything else. If noise is the priority, work towards the south end. If you want to read the game properly, the Tribuna or the upper tier along the sides will serve you better.
Step4
Read the listing notes carefully
The notes carry the detail that decides whether a seat suits you: whether tickets are sold in pairs, whether seats are together, which tier and block they sit in and how they will be delivered. Block numbering at San Mames runs around the bowl rather than by stand, so the number alone will not tell you where you are.
Step5
Check the quantity before you commit
Groups should confirm the listing holds enough seats together rather than assuming adjacency. Because most inventory here comes from individual members releasing their own seats, single and paired listings are far more common than blocks of four.
Step6
Complete secure checkout
Payment runs through a secure gateway and the total shown at checkout is what you pay. Confirm the fixture date and kick-off time on the confirmation screen, which matters in Spain where slots are set only a few weeks ahead.
Step7
Receive your order confirmation
A confirmation email arrives immediately with your order reference and the expected delivery method. Keep the reference somewhere you can find it, because it is the fastest route to support if the fixture is rescheduled.
Step8
Follow delivery through to matchday
Use the track order page to monitor progress from confirmation to delivery. Spanish clubs commonly issue tickets close to the match, so a quiet tracker a fortnight out is normal rather than a warning sign.
Followed in order, those eight stages are unremarkable, which is the point. The work belongs at the listing stage, where reading the notes properly prevents almost every problem that arises later.
Home dates at San Mames do not behave uniformly. Some Athletic Bilbao tickets stay listed for weeks while others are gone within hours of appearing, and in a ground where the season ticket base absorbs most of the capacity the gap between the two is severe. Knowing which category applies tells you how far ahead to commit.
| Fixture Type | Why It Moves Fast |
|---|---|
| Real Sociedad at home | The Basque derby, and the fixture that defines the season for a large part of the support. Given added edge by the Copa del Rey semi-final between the two in 2026, which Real Sociedad went on to win the competition from. |
| Barcelona and Real Madrid | Two dates that draw attention from well beyond the region, with visiting supporters and neutrals competing for the same small float of released seats. Historically among Athletic's better results at home. |
| Alaves at home | The other Basque fixture on the calendar, with Vitoria-Gasteiz under an hour away and a travelling support that fills its allocation immediately. Less publicised than the Real Sociedad derby and no less keenly contested. |
| Atletico Madrid and the European places | Fixtures against the clubs Athletic need to catch if they are to return to continental football. These carry weight in a season where the target is a top-six finish rather than survival. |
| Season opener and Terzic's early home matches | The first home fixtures under a new coach after a decade of Valverde will draw a curious crowd on top of the regulars, and the pressure of a first campaign makes early results unusually significant. |
Delivery depends on the seller and on how the club issued that particular ticket. Spanish clubs have moved steadily towards digital issuance, and most orders now arrive electronically rather than on paper.
Read the delivery method in the listing notes before buying. If you are flying into Bilbao on the morning of the match, a listing offering postal delivery to a home address is the wrong purchase whatever the price.
Gates open around 90 minutes before kick-off, and because the metro, tram and bus station all sit within a few minutes of the turnstiles the approach fills late and fast. An hour before kick-off is comfortable for a routine league fixture and worth extending for a derby, when the streets around the ground are busy from mid-afternoon. Arriving early also gives you the build-up, which at San Mames means a full ground singing before the teams appear rather than a stand still filling at kick-off.
Bring photo identification that matches the name on your booking. Spanish clubs request it more often than English ones, particularly for fixtures classified as high risk and where a ticket originates from a member's released seat. Load digital tickets before you reach the turnstile and make sure your phone has charge, because signal around the ground degrades when tens of thousands of people arrive within the same twenty minutes.
Bag rules follow the standard Spanish top-flight pattern and there is no cloakroom, so anything refused at the gate has to go back with you. Large bags and rucksacks are turned away, as are glass containers, flares, smoke devices, selfie sticks, poles and professional cameras with detachable lenses. Bilbao is wet for much of the season, but every seat in the ground is under cover, so a coat is more useful than an umbrella.
| Detail | Information |
|---|---|
| Full name | Athletic Club, known in Basque as Athletic Kluba |
| Founded | 18 July 1898 |
| Nicknames | Lehoiak, the Lions, and Zuri-Gorriak, the red and whites |
| Stadium | San Mames, opened 2013, capacity 53,331, expanding towards 55,771 |
| Head coach | Edin Terzic, appointed in May 2026 on a contract to 2028, taking over from Ernesto Valverde in July |
| Captain | Inaki Williams, appointed in 2025 as the first Black captain in the club's history |
| President | Jon Uriarte |
| League | La Liga, 20 clubs, 38 matches, and a 96th consecutive top-flight season |
| Signing policy | Players born in or developed in the greater Basque Country, unbroken since 1912 |
Athletic are one of only three clubs never relegated from La Liga, alongside Real Madrid and Barcelona, and the only one of the three to have achieved it while restricting itself to players from a single region. That combination is the story of the club, and it explains why a match at San Mames feels like a different proposition to a match anywhere else in Spain.
Athletic were among the strongest clubs in Spain from the beginning, winning two of the first three league championships and building a cup record that no club except Barcelona has since bettered. The decision in 1912 to restrict recruitment to the Basque Country was made when the club was near the top of the Spanish game rather than as a response to weakness, which is part of why it has proved so durable. The original San Mames, opened in 1913, gave the identity a physical home.
The postwar decades were the club's most productive in terms of trophies, and they belong above all to Telmo Zarra, whose 335 goals remain the standard against which every Athletic forward is measured. The trophy that carries his name is still awarded annually to the leading Spanish scorer in La Liga. Iribar followed as the emblem of the following generation, a goalkeeper whose standing in Basque football went well beyond his performances and who remains among the most respected figures the club has produced.
The Clemente sides of the early 1980s are the last Athletic teams to have won the league, and they did it twice in succession with a squad drawn entirely from the region. What followed was a forty-year wait for a major trophy that shaped how two generations of supporters relate to the club. The Bielsa team of 2011/12 came closest to breaking it, reaching both the Europa League and Copa del Rey finals in a single season and losing both, and it is remembered in Bilbao with a warmth that the results alone do not explain.
The past fifteen years have brought the club a stadium worthy of its history and, eventually, the trophy the previous four decades had denied it. The 2024 Copa del Rey win against Mallorca, settled 4-2 on penalties after a 1-1 draw at La Cartuja, ended a drought that had come to feel structural, and the celebrations in Bilbao ran for days. Valverde built on it with a fourth-place finish in 2024/25 and a return to the Champions League, then stepped down in 2026 after a twelfth-place season that has left Terzic with a rebuild rather than a continuation.
| Legend | Role | Contribution | Milestones |
|---|---|---|---|
| Telmo Zarra | Forward, 1940s and 1950s | The most prolific goalscorer in the club's history by a distance, and for decades the leading scorer in the history of La Liga. His name is attached to the trophy still awarded each season to the leading Spanish scorer in the Spanish top flight. | 335 goals for Athletic |
| Jose Angel Iribar | Goalkeeper, 1960s and 1970s | Known as El Txopo, he defined the club across two decades and became a figure of standing across Basque football well beyond his playing career. Captained Athletic through a long period of cup competitiveness. | More than 600 appearances across eighteen seasons |
| Javier Clemente | Head coach, 1981 to 1986 | Took a squad drawn entirely from the Basque Country to consecutive league championships in 1983 and 1984, adding the Copa del Rey in the second of them. No Athletic manager since has won the league. | Two league titles and a domestic double |
| Marcelo Bielsa | Head coach, 2011 to 2013 | Never won a trophy at the club and is nonetheless among its most fondly remembered figures. His 2011/12 side reached the Europa League and Copa del Rey finals and played a style of football that supporters still reference. | Two major finals in a single season |
| Ernesto Valverde | Head coach, three spells to 2026 | Took charge of more matches than any coach in the club's history across three separate periods, ending the 40-year trophy drought with the 2024 Copa del Rey and returning Athletic to the Champions League in 2025. | The 2024 Copa del Rey and a fourth-place finish in 2024/25 |
| Inaki Williams | Forward, 2015 to present | Set a La Liga record for consecutive appearances that ran to 251 matches and 2,191 days without missing a game, and became the first Black captain in the club's history when appointed in 2025. A rare constant through a period of considerable change. | 251 consecutive La Liga appearances, a competition record |
Athletic hold the second-deepest cup record in Spanish football and a league record that has not been added to since the mid-1980s. The counts below have been cross-referenced against club publications and independent football records.
| Competition | Titles |
|---|---|
| La Liga | 8, most recently in 1983/84 |
| Copa del Rey | 24, with the club also counting the 1902 Copa de la Coronacion for a total of 25 |
| Supercopa de Espana | 3, in 1984, 2015 and 2021 |
| UEFA Cup | Runners-up in 1976/77 |
| Europa League | Runners-up in 2011/12 |
| Seasons in La Liga | 96 consecutive, never relegated |
The Copa del Rey total is second only to Barcelona, and Athletic are one of only three clubs never to have been relegated from the Spanish top flight. Both records were achieved under a recruitment policy no other club in the division operates.
Athletic's rivalries follow the map of Basque football rather than the map of Spanish football, with one significant exception. The regional fixtures are about who represents the Basque Country, while the meetings with Barcelona carry a century of cup history and a shared history of political symbolism.
The Basque derby, and the most keenly contested fixture on the Athletic calendar. San Sebastian is an hour east along the coast, the two clubs draw on overlapping talent pools and the argument over which better represents Basque football has run for a century. The rivalry gained a fresh chapter in 2026, when Real Sociedad knocked Athletic out at the Copa del Rey semi-final stage and went on to lift the trophy, which is not a sequence anyone in Bilbao has forgotten.
Less geographical than the derby and no less loaded. The two clubs have met in more Copa del Rey finals than any other pairing in the competition's history, including Athletic's defeats in 2009, 2012 and 2015, and both have carried regional identity in a way that made them natural counterweights to Real Madrid through the twentieth century. Athletic beat Barcelona to win the 2021 Supercopa, which supporters cite readily given the cup final record.
The third Basque fixture, with Vitoria-Gasteiz less than an hour south. The imbalance between the clubs is what shapes it: Athletic have never been relegated and Alaves have spent most of their history outside the top flight, so the derby means considerably more in Vitoria than in Bilbao. That asymmetry produces a fixture Athletic are expected to win and occasionally do not.
The opponent in Athletic's first European final, the 1977 UEFA Cup, which Juventus won across two legs. It remains one of the closest the club has come to a continental trophy, and the tie is still referenced whenever Athletic draw Italian opposition. For a club that has reached only two European finals in its history, the identity of the opponent in the first carries lasting weight.
Domestic opponents who became a European rivalry in 2012, when Atletico beat Bielsa's Athletic 3-0 in the Europa League final in Bucharest. That defeat, coming weeks after the Copa del Rey final loss to Barcelona, ended the most exciting season the club had had in decades with nothing to show for it, and it colours the fixture between the two whenever it comes round.
| Season | Summary |
|---|---|
| 2021/22 | A solid top-half campaign of 55 points from 14 wins, 13 draws and 11 defeats, with a positive goal difference of plus seven. The club's 123rd season and its 91st consecutive year in the top flight, it included the 4,000th competitive fixture in Athletic's history against Osasuna on 2 January 2022. Inaki Williams top-scored with eight goals across all competitions, and Athletic took part in the Supercopa de Espana in January. |
| 2022/23 | Sixth place on 51 points from 14 wins, nine draws and 15 defeats, a return that flattered a side scoring only 47 goals. Inaki Williams again led the scoring with 11. The summer had brought in Gorka Guruzeta and returned Ander Herrera to the club, and the season was the 92nd consecutive top-flight campaign in the club's history. |
| 2023/24 | The season the drought ended. Athletic won the Copa del Rey on 6 April 2024, beating Mallorca 4-2 on penalties after a 1-1 draw at La Cartuja for a 24th title and a first major trophy in 40 years. They also finished fifth in La Liga on 68 points with 61 goals scored, their best league return in years. Gorka Guruzeta top-scored with 16 in all competitions and average home attendance reached 46,112. |
| 2024/25 | Fourth on 70 points from 19 wins, 13 draws and six defeats, conceding only 29 goals across the campaign and securing a Champions League place for the first time since 2014/15 with a win over Getafe on matchday 36. Athletic also reached the Europa League semi-finals, finishing second in the league phase on 19 points. Oihan Sancet led the scoring with 17 goals, and average home attendance climbed to 48,420. |
| 2025/26 | A difficult return to the top table. Athletic finished twelfth on 45 points from 13 wins, six draws and 19 defeats with a goal difference of minus 15, and exited the Champions League at the league phase with two wins, two draws and four defeats against opposition including Arsenal, Paris Saint-Germain and Borussia Dortmund. They reached the Copa del Rey semi-finals before losing to Real Sociedad. Gorka Guruzeta top-scored with ten, and Valverde announced in March that he would step down at the end of the season. |
Terzic inherits a squad with more quality than a twelfth-place finish suggests, built entirely from the Basque Country under a policy no other club in the division operates. Nico Williams remains the most valuable player at the club by a distance, Mikel Jauregizar and Oihan Sancet anchor a strong central midfield and Unai Simon continues in goal as one of the better goalkeepers in Spain. Aymeric Laporte, who returned to the club in 2025, brings the most decorated career in the dressing room.
Market values below are approximate, drawn from publicly available valuation data and converted to sterling. They move with form and contract length rather than representing any asking price, and at Athletic they carry an additional caveat: the club cannot simply replace a departing player from the open market.
| No. | Player | Position | Value (£) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Unai Simon | Goalkeeper | 19m |
| 3 | Daniel Vivian | Centre-back | 17m |
| 4 | Aitor Paredes | Centre-back | 6.5m |
| 14 | Aymeric Laporte | Centre-back | 6.9m |
| 12 | Jesus Areso | Right-back | 4.3m |
| 2 | Andoni Gorosabel | Right-back | 2.6m |
| 17 | Yuri Berchiche | Left-back | 0.9m |
| 19 | Adama Boiro | Defender | 2.2m |
| 18 | Mikel Jauregizar | Midfielder | 26m |
| 8 | Oihan Sancet | Midfielder | 21.5m |
| 24 | Benat Prados | Midfielder | 13m |
| 28 | Peio Canales | Midfielder | 8.6m |
| 23 | Robert Navarro | Midfielder | 5.2m |
| 10 | Nico Williams | Winger | 34m |
| 9 | Inaki Williams | Forward | 6.9m |
| 11 | Gorka Guruzeta | Forward | 4.3m |
| 7 | Alex Berenguer | Forward | 3.4m |
Also in the first-team group are Alejandro Padilla, Mikel Santos, Hugo Rincon, Unai Eguiluz, Inigo Ruiz de Galarreta, Unai Vencedor, Alejandro Rego, Maroan Sannadi and Nico Serrano, with academy players from Lezama training alongside the senior squad.
No. Membership affects your priority in the club's own sales windows but is not required to attend. Buying through a verified marketplace gives you access to seats released by members without joining a waiting list that had passed 8,500 names by spring 2026.
The club has restricted recruitment to players born in or developed in the greater Basque Country since 1912, covering both the Spanish and French Basque regions. It is a choice rather than a rule imposed on them, and it has held through eight league titles and 96 consecutive seasons without relegation.
The lower tier at the south end, where the organised support gathers with flags and drums. Expect to stand for much of the match. For a seated view that lets you read the game, the Tribuna at the halfway line or the upper tier along the sides works better.
The ground has its own Santimami station serving the metro, tram and commuter rail, and sits directly across from the Termibus regional bus station. From the Casco Viejo the metro takes about ten minutes, and it is roughly a twenty-five minute walk along the river from the Guggenheim.
Yes. In April 2026 the club approved a 5.2 million euro project adding roughly 2,700 seats to take capacity towards 55,771, achieved through tighter row spacing and new rows at the top of the upper tier. The work is being carried out across the season rather than in a summer break.
A stadium called La Catedral, a squad drawn from one region alone and 96 seasons without relegation make San Mames one of the more distinctive afternoons available in European football. 1BoxOffice has been a verified marketplace for live event tickets since 2006, with every order carrying a 150% money-back guarantee. Pick your fixture from the lists below and secure a seat while there is one to secure.
Sources: Official Athletic Club website at athletic-club.eus, LaLiga, UEFA, Transfermarkt, StadiumDB, Football Espana and Wikipedia.
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