Where are the Chiefs playing in Brazil? 4 facts about the stadium
The Kansas City Chiefs will kick off their 2025 NFL season on another continent. Patrick Mahomes, Travis Kelce, Chris Jones and the rest of the Chiefs have touched down in São Paulo and are ready for an AFC West clash against the Los Angeles Chargers at 7 p.m. Friday.
The game marks the first time the Chiefs have played in Brazil and the second NFL game in the South American country. Now-defending Super Bowl champion Philadelphia Eagles opened the 2024 season against the Green Bay Packers inside Corinthians Arena, the same venue that’ll host the Chiefs on Friday.
Players and fans in São Paulo can expect a sunny afternoon with temperatures as high as 79 degrees, according to The Weather Channel. The area is on Brasília Time Zone, which is two hours ahead of Kansas City.
When was Corinthians Arena built? What else has the stadium been used for? Here are four facts about the venue.
Who else uses Corinthians Arena?
The open-air stadium is home to SC Corinthians, the men’s soccer team in the top division of Brazilian soccer, Campeonato Brasileiro Série A. The team is currently in 12th place and was founded in 1910.
There is also a Brazilian women’s soccer team with the same name, but they play in Estádio Parque São Jorge in Sao Paolo.
Corinthians Arena capacity
Corinthians Arena hosts fewer fans than GEHA Field at Arrowhead Stadium, but the Chiefs can still expect an energetic crowd. The stadium has a capacity of 47,252, according to FIFA, compared to Arrowhead’s capacity of 76,416.
However, the stadium has gone beyond capacity in the past. It hosted 63,237 fans for Argentina’s 0-0 draw with Netherlands in the 2014 FIFA World Cup semifinals, according to Sporting News. The game was decided in penalty kicks, which Argentina won 4-2 to advance to the World Cup final.
When was Corinthians Arena built?
The venue finished construction in 2014, just in time for Brazil to host the World Cup that summer.
The stadium was decades in the making, Sporting News says. The team had been planning on building a new stadium since the late 1970s, but ran into many issues along the way, including construction workers dying to get the stadium ready to host the global soccer tournament.
Construction workers officially broke ground on the stadium May 30, 2011, and finished May 10, 2014.
It was featured in The Simpsons
Homer Simpson once referred a soccer match inside Corinthians Arena.
Episode 16 on season 25 of the long-running animated classic TV show was titled “You Don’t Have to Live Like a Referee.” In this episode, Homer is hired as a referee for the World Cup after a speech from his daughter Lisa praising his honesty went viral. It also helped that Homer doesn’t care about the sport.
“It says here that Homer Simpson was recruited for his honesty and utter disinterest,” a commentator said during the episode.
The match that takes place inside the arena during the episode features Brazil and Luxembourg.
This story was originally published September 4, 2025 at 4:42 PM.
