Kyoto Stadium (京都スタジアム)

Kyoto Stadium was planned to be built in Joyo City, Kyoto Prefecture.

The tentative name was the Kizugawa Ugan Stadium.

The stadium was scheduled to be constructed as the venue for the 2002 FIFA World Cup, which was cancelled because Kyoto Prefecture was not selected as a host city.

Details
Bidding to host the World Cup, the Kyoto Prefecture planned to build a soccer-specific stadium which met the standard for the international games and could accommodate about 40,000 people on the right bank of the Kizu-gawa River in Joyo City (Kyoto Prefecture). After it had been decided, however, that Japan and Republic of Korea would jointly host the World Cup, 15 Japanese municipalities wishing to host the World Cup were narrowed down to 10 and Kyoto Prefecture was eliminated.

After that, the prefecture once announced that it would respond to the Osaka Olympic Initiative of Osaka City, Osaka Prefecture, aimed at hosting the Olympic Games in 2008, by redesigning and downsizing the construction plan and building a stadium for the Olympic Football Tournament with 30,000 seats. But, because of financial difficulties as well as the fact that Osaka lost the bid for the Olympics, the construction plan itself was abandoned.

After that, Kyoto City unveiled its plan to build a ball game stadium at Yokooji Sports Park to use as a new home stadium of the Kyoto Sanga F.C. based in Kyoto City.

A stadium review committee which was organized by Kyoto City and others in 2005 announced that the stadium would not be completed until around 2020 because measures had to be taken to improve the access to Yokooji Sports Park, such as opening a new station of the Keihan Electric Railway.

But they eventually concluded that it was difficult to build a new stadium in Yokooji and the more realistic idea of renovating Kyoto Nishikyogoku Athletic Stadium is now being studied.

In this regard, the idea of installing movable seats to offer the sense of presence was announced.

[Original Japanese]