Newlands Stadium
sports venue in Cape Town, South Africa
The Newlands Stadium is located in Cape Town, South Africa. The stadium has a capacity of 51,900 people, but is not an all-seater venue.
Various sports teams used the stadium as their home base, including:
Stormers in Super Rugby
Western Province in the Currie Cup
The city's soccer clubs Ajax Cape Town, Santos and the dissolved club Vasco da Gama occasionally hosted matches at the Newlands Stadium.
History
The Western Province Rugby and Football Union decided to buy the ground the stadium stands on in 1888. The first official match at Newlands took place on 31 May 1890 when Stellenbosch defeated Villagers in front of a crowd of about 2,400 people. The following year the stadium hosted its first rugby test when the British Lions toured South Africa.
The first permanent concrete stands were erected on the grounds in 1919. Later, in 1927, the new grandstand was erected and the field layout was changed to run from north–south. Yet more changes came in 1931 when the South stand was also enlarged.
In the 1950s parts of a new grandstand as well as South stand were completed, facilities such as lifts and a Presidential room were added, a fourth bay was added to the grandstand, and an extension was added to the lower gallery.
The public source identifies “Newlands Stadium” as sports venue in Cape Town, South Africa. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Newlands, Stadium and sports.
Why this record matters
A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “Newlands Stadium”, the useful work is to connect “sports venue in Cape Town, South Africa” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.
The strongest evidence will usually combine a dated visual record with documents produced by the authority responsible for the place. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 30, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1368280. Authority coordinates are -33.970, 18.468. 1 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1888, 1890, 1919 and 1927.
Architectural summaries often privilege surviving fabric and can understate demolished phases, contested use or displaced communities. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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Three-step research path
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This entry incorporates text from “Newlands Stadium” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.