The Avicii Arena is a large spherical indoor arena in southern Stockholm, used for concerts, ice hockey, handball and televised events such as Melodifestivalen. It opened in 1989 under the name Stockholm Globe Arena, was known for decades as Ericsson Globe under a sponsorship deal, and was renamed Avicii Arena in 2021 in honour of the Swedish DJ and producer Tim Bergling, known professionally as Avicii.
What is the Avicii Arena, exactly?
It is a purpose-built indoor arena shaped as a complete sphere, standing in the Söder district of Stockholm at Arenavägen, close to Globen metro station. The building is used for indoor sport, large-scale concerts, trade fairs and broadcast entertainment, and it is one of the defining shapes on the southern Stockholm skyline — visible from a considerable distance because of its size and simplicity: a single white sphere with no visible seams from outside.
The arena’s own operator describes it as one of the largest spherical buildings in the world by volume, a claim commonly repeated in reference sources and in city guides to Stockholm’s modern landmarks. Its interior seating is arranged for events from roughly 8,000 to 16,000 people depending on configuration — a figure that changes with the type of event, so anyone booking should confirm capacity and layout for a specific show on the operator’s own site rather than relying on a fixed number here.
What was it called before it became the Avicii Arena?
Before 2021, the building carried two earlier names. It opened in February 1989 as the Stockholm Globe Arena, generally shortened in everyday Swedish to simply “Globen” — the globe. For much of its subsequent history it operated under a corporate naming-rights agreement as the Ericsson Globe, reflecting a sponsorship deal with the Swedish telecommunications company. Long-time residents of Stockholm still often refer to the surrounding area and the metro station beside it as Globen, regardless of the arena’s official name at any given time.
The metro station itself — on the red line — has kept the name Globen throughout all of the arena’s renamings, which is one reason the older name persists in ordinary speech even after the building’s formal title changed.
Why was it renamed the Avicii Arena?
The arena was renamed in September 2021 in memory of Tim Bergling, the Stockholm-born DJ and producer who performed as Avicii and who died in 2018. The renaming was arranged by the arena’s operators together with Bergling’s family and the Tim Bergling Foundation, a mental-health charity established by his family after his death. The date chosen for the renaming ceremony, 8 September, corresponds to what would have been Avicii’s birthday.
Coverage of the renaming at the time noted a further coincidence: Avicii was born in 1989, the same year the arena itself opened as the Stockholm Globe Arena. The building’s connection to the artist is not incidental scenery — Avicii’s music built an international audience out of Stockholm’s electronic and pop production scene, a scene the city has separately institutionalised at sites like the ABBA Museum, which documents an earlier generation of Swedish pop success on a similarly global scale.
.jpg){kind=link}
Why is it shaped like a sphere?
The spherical form was chosen by the original architects, Berg Arkitektkontor, partly for structural efficiency and partly to create a distinctive civic landmark on the edge of the city. A sphere distributes roof load evenly without internal columns, which is useful for an arena that needs an unobstructed floor for ice hockey, handball, concert staging and exhibitions in turn. The visual result — a plain white ball roughly the height of a 20-storey building — has made it one of the more recognisable shapes in Stockholm’s skyline, discussed in the same breath as the city’s older landmark silhouettes covered on this site, including Stockholm City Hall at the opposite end of the city’s architectural history.
What happens inside the arena today?
The Avicii Arena functions as a multi-purpose venue rather than a museum or a single-use stadium. Its recurring uses include:
- Ice hockey and handball fixtures, including matches involving Stockholm-based clubs and occasional international tournaments
- Large concerts by touring international and Swedish artists
- Melodifestivalen, the Swedish competition that selects the country’s entry for the Eurovision Song Contest, which has used the arena as a recurring final venue
- The Eurovision Song Contest itself, hosted here in 2016 when Sweden held the contest
- Trade fairs, conferences and other large-scale public events
Because these bookings change from month to month, the arena’s own event calendar — published by its operator — is the only reliable source for what is actually on at a given time; nothing fixed should be assumed from a general description of the building.
What is SkyView, and is it part of the same building?
SkyView is a cable-car style attraction built onto the outside of the sphere, consisting of two glass gondola cabins that travel along the arena’s curved outer wall to a viewing point near its summit. It is operated as a separate ticketed attraction from the arena’s sporting and concert events, offering views across Stockholm from close to the top of the structure on a clear day. Ticketing, operating hours and seasonal closures are set by the operator and should be checked directly before planning a visit, since none of these details are fixed year-round.
Where is the Avicii Arena, and how do people get there?
The arena stands in the district sometimes referred to informally as Globen, part of southern Stockholm rather than the older central core covered by Gamla Stan or the museum-dense island of Djurgården. It sits directly beside Globen metro station on the red line, making it one of the more straightforward major venues to reach by public transport without needing a car. Stockholm’s transport operator, SL, sets current timetables and fares for the red line, and these should be checked on its own site rather than assumed from older information.
The surrounding area also includes Hovet, an older, smaller indoor arena, and the newer Tele2 Arena football and events stadium, forming a cluster of large sporting venues on this side of the city — a pattern of purpose-built modern arenas that contrasts with the older civic landmarks covered elsewhere in this site’s Landmarks & Sights coverage.
Does the Avicii Arena connect to Stockholm’s museum scene?
Not directly — it is a working arena rather than a collecting institution, so it does not hold objects, archives or a permanent exhibition in the way a museum does. Readers interested in how Stockholm organises its actual museum holdings, including the national collections and smaller specialist museums, are better served by the site’s Museums & Galleries archive, which covers institutions from the Nationalmuseum to smaller, single-collection sites such as the Spritmuseum.
Where the Avicii Arena does connect meaningfully to the wider city is as a case study in how Stockholm’s outer districts function differently from its historic centre — built around transport nodes, large modern venues and 20th-century civic planning rather than medieval streets. That contrast is covered in more general terms in the site’s Neighbourhoods archive, which sets central districts like Gamla Stan against the newer, more functional southern parts of the city where the arena stands.
What should a visitor actually check before going?
Anyone planning to attend an event, ride SkyView, or simply see the building up close should confirm three things directly with the operator rather than relying on general descriptions: the current event schedule, SkyView’s operating hours and ticket arrangements, and any access notes for the Globen metro station on the day of travel. These details shift with the season and with each new booking, and the arena’s own communications are the only dependable source for them.
Access Stockholm is an independent guide written from published, checkable sources. We have not visited the places described here and we do not publish personal recommendations or invented ‘local favourites’ — where something is singled out as notable, we say who says so. Opening times, fares, closures and prices change at short notice, so treat everything here as a starting point and confirm with the museum, operator or venue directly before building a day around it. We give no advice on visas, insurance, health or safety; use your own government’s official guidance for those.