Villa Park and St Andrew's: Birmingham's Two Grounds, Compared

Birmingham has two senior clubs inside the city itself, and their grounds sit on opposite sides of the centre about four miles apart. Villa Park is north in Aston, St Andrew's south-east in Bordesley, and both are a short train ride from New Street, though in opposite directions from it.

Both are also in the middle of substantial change, which is unusual for two grounds at once.

One is rebuilding a stand this season; the other has a proposal for an entirely new stadium a mile from its current site. Neither of the two situations is settled enough to be taken for granted yet.

The fixture between the two is known as the Second City derby, and its rhythm is strange for a rivalry of that intensity. The clubs have spent long stretches in different divisions, so the meeting comes round far less often than the feeling between the two sets of supporters would suggest.

That scarcity is part of why it matters so much locally. A rivalry played twice a season becomes routine; one that disappears for years at a time accumulates, not discharges, and anyone in the city during a derby week notices the difference in the whole city's atmosphere well beforehand.

Villa Park holds 43,205 and is the larger of the two by a comfortable margin.

Preliminary work on the north stand began in March 2026 and the stand is closed for the whole of the 2026/27 season, which leaves the ground working at 36,887 seats for this one season only.

When that finishes the ground goes beyond 50,000, with completion due before the start of the 2027/28 season and the Euro 2028 tournament. For a visitor this season, the practical consequence is the reduced 36,887 and access arrangements that differ noticeably from any previous visit made to the very same stands. Stadium tours run on non-matchdays and are booked through the club's website.

The Bordesley ground holds 29,409 and took the name St Andrew's @ Knighthead Park in 2024, after the parent company of the club's ownership.

The stadium itself did not move or change, so older references to St Andrew's point at exactly the same ground standing on exactly the same site in Bordesley as before.

More significant is what is proposed, not what has happened. A 62,000-seat stadium at Bordesley Green, about a mile east, is planned for around 2030 and would be the largest football ground in the Midlands.

Schemes of that size move a great deal, so the club's own announcements are what count.

For Villa Park, Witton is about five minutes from the turnstiles and Aston roughly ten, both on the Cross-City line out of New Street.

For St Andrew's, Bordesley has a matchday service and Small Heath is the alternative, with the walk out from the centre rather longer than most people expect it to be.

Because the two grounds lie in opposite directions from the same station, a single city-centre base serves either without difficulty.

That is the practical reason visiting supporters almost never stay near a ground here, and it holds equally well for a weekend that has been built around watching both clubs.