New university ice hockey arena in Prague step closer to reality

The Prague City Council and four Prague universities have put pen to paper on a memorandum targeting the construction of a new ice hockey arena. This should serve both as their common home base for the Czech University Ice Hockey League (ULLH) and as a public ice rink.

Ice hockey has many passionate fans across Czechia, and its university division has also grown significantly in popularity. Especially in Prague, where this year’s showdown of the four local universities – the “Battle for Prague” – attracted 9,200 fans, a record for university sport in the country.

Currently, the teams of all four universities – Charles University, Czech Technical University (ČVUT), Prague University of Economics (VŠE), and Czech University of Life Sciences (ČZU) – play their home games in various ice hockey stadiums around Prague.

None of them, however, meet the needs of university ice hockey, according to Josef Vostracký, architect of the projected arena and former university ice hockey player.

“The new stadium should have a seated capacity of about 2,500. An arena of those proportions does not exist in Prague. Of course, there is the O2 Arena [20,000 capacity] and Extraliga stadiums, which can host 4,000 to 6,000 spectators, but those are unavailable to us.

“The last stadium built for at least 300 spectators, was Hvězda in Prague 6, constructed in 1983. Since then, no small to medium-sized capacity stadiums have been built.”

For Vostracký, an adjacent practice rink or multi-purpose indoor gym could equally be part of a vision for the future stadium. With an initial study completed, the search begins for a suitable location, which the architect estimates will be at the city periphery.

Tomáš Hlaváč, chairman of the Czech University Ice Hockey Association, says the new arena would also serve the Czech national youth setup and para ice hockey teams. Besides that, it could also attract university teams from the USA, such as Cornell, who played four exhibition matches in Prague in 2024.

“We would like them to come regularly, but we need better conditions for that. Last year, Ivy League schools played their first round of league games in Belfast. I can imagine something like that happening in Czechia too.”

The recently finished, fifth season of the Czech University Ice Hockey League reached a total viewership of almost 80,000, a 35% increase compared to the previous year.