Notre Dame Stadium holds 77,622, which makes it the smallest home venue among the sport’s traditional powers and the only one under 80,000. Knute Rockne designed it, modelled it on Michigan Stadium, and died in a plane crash five months after its first game. It has been expanded once and reduced once.
| Official capacity | 77,622, since 2017 |
| Record attendance | 80,795 vs USC, October 15, 2005 |
| Opened | October 4, 1930, capacity 54,000 |
| Designer | Knute Rockne, with Osborn Engineering |
| Original cost | About $750,000 |
| Surface | FieldTurf since 2014, natural grass before |
| Overlooked by | The Word of Life mural on Hesburgh Library, known as Touchdown Jesus |
The Record Crowd
The largest crowd in stadium history was 80,795 for USC on October 15, 2005, the Bush Push game, in which the Trojans won 34 to 31 on a quarterback sneak assisted by an illegal shove as time expired. That figure was the official capacity from 1997 to 2016, and several games in that span matched it, so the record is effectively shared among the sellouts of that era. The 2005 game is the one everyone cites.
Since 2017 the capacity has been 77,622, and no crowd can approach the old record. Our Notre Dame vs USC page covers that game.
How the Capacity Changed
| Year | Capacity | What changed |
|---|---|---|
| 1930 | 54,000 | Opened, a single bowl with no upper deck |
| 1966 | 59,075 | Bleacher additions |
| 1997 | 80,795 | Upper deck added around the entire bowl |
| 2017 | 77,622 | Campus Crossroads project, seats replaced with premium areas |
Rockne’s Stadium
Rockne had wanted a new stadium for years and pushed the university to build it after the 1929 championship season, which Notre Dame had played entirely on the road while the old Cartier Field was torn down. He toured Michigan Stadium, which had opened in 1927, and used the same engineering firm. The result was a scaled down version of the Big House: a single tier concrete bowl seating 54,000.
It opened on October 4, 1930, with a 20 to 14 win over SMU, and the dedication game a week later beat Navy. Rockne coached seven games there, won all of them and a third national championship, and died in a plane crash in Kansas the following March.
The 1997 Expansion
The stadium was untouched in any significant way for 67 years. The 1997 project added an upper deck around the whole bowl, taking capacity from 59,075 to 80,795, and was the first time the building’s silhouette changed. It went 40 years without a change to the playing surface, which stayed natural grass until 2014.
Why It Got Smaller
The Campus Crossroads project, completed in 2017, wrapped the stadium in three new academic and athletic buildings, added a video board for the first time, and replaced roughly 3,000 seats with premium and club seating. Capacity dropped to 77,622. It was the same trade Ohio Stadium and Bryant-Denny made in the years after, fewer seats and more revenue per seat.
The Sellout Streak
Notre Dame sold out every home game from 1973 into 2019, a run of more than 270 consecutive games that was the longest in the sport at the time it ended. The streak was broken by a game against New Mexico in September 2019 that fell a few hundred tickets short.
The Bottom Line
Notre Dame Stadium holds 77,622, the smallest of any major program’s home, and its record crowd of 80,795 dates from the Bush Push game against USC in 2005. Knute Rockne designed it on the Michigan Stadium model, coached one unbeaten season in it, and died before the second. It was expanded once in 1997 and reduced once in 2017. Our Notre Dame all time record page covers what has happened on the field.