Atlético vs Real Madrid Tickets: Official Sale First, Then the Authorised Agencies

The club's general seats are gone, only VIP is left

Atlético de Madrid host Real Madrid on Sunday 20 September 2026, kick-off 16:15 local time (15:15 in the UK). The club's own sale opened for members on 24 August and for the general public at 10:00 on 26 August. On 2 September there were still general seats to buy. When I opened the seat map on 8 September, all four areas showed "Entradas agotadas", sold out, and the only thing still on sale was VIP.

The club site is the only place that sells at face value, so it is still where I would start. On the same day, the fixture list still showed the derby with a "COMPRAR ENTRADAS" button, the one that means buy tickets. A button on the list and a seat behind it are two different things, and you only find out by clicking through. The alternatives below are ordered by how safe I think they are, not by price. When the club has nothing left, my first stop is P1 Travel. Booking through the agency links in this article may earn Cholismo Lab a small commission, at no extra cost to you. The derby-day section draws on the record of the 2024 stoppage and my own memory of being in the ground that afternoon.

Face value only exists on the club site, and it lasted two weeks

The entry point is the club's fixture list, which now carries a "Powered by fever" mark. Each match shows one of four buttons: COMPRAR ENTRADAS, which is the door into the purchase page; VENTA PARA SOCIOS, sale for members only; AVÍSAME, which registers you for a notification before general sale opens; and a separate VIP button. COMPRAR ENTRADAS does not mean there are general seats left. For the derby, the match page gives the dates: members from Monday 24 August, general public from 26 August at 10:00. The gap was two days, and the Manchester United and Bayern fixtures, members-only on 2 September, had both opened to the public by 8 September.

On 2 September, with general seats still available, clicking the derby button did not take you straight to the seat map. It put you in a Queue-it waiting room, and the estimated wait read "more than an hour". Clicking the Osasuna fixture the same day went straight to the sales page with no queue, so of the two matches I tried that day, only the derby had a line. The waiting page says you have ten minutes to enter once your turn comes, and that leaving the page does not lose your place. Wait wherever you like, but be ready to pick a seat when the turn arrives. On 8 September, with everything showing sold out, there was no queue at all.

Past the queue you land on the seat map, which runs on OneBox. You narrow down by area, then block, then seat, and there is a 3D view to check the sightline before you commit. The site asks you to log in, but "Seguir como invitado", continue as a guest, gets you through without creating an account. The small print on the page says tickets cannot be exchanged or refunded, that Grada Baja Fondo Sur is members only and name-bound, and that babies need a ticket too.

I have not been able to confirm 2026 face values, because a sold-out map shows no prices. For the 2024 derby, a Spanish report put member tickets in the upper tier behind the goals (Fondo Alto) at €70 and general-sale Lateral seats at €280. The same piece said the public sale had closed once the match was less than a week away, and that legal resale after the club sold out could reach €500. This year the club's seats went inside two weeks of the public sale opening. If next season follows the same pattern, I would buy on the first day.

New this season, season-ticket holders have to use their abono at least ten times. The FAQ says a match counts if the pass is scanned at the turnstile, whether the holder goes or lends it to a family member or friend. For matches where nobody uses it, the seat has to be released through the official system, with an allowance of three matches a season for late problems and oversights. The reasoning is that with more than 160,000 members the club does not want empty seats. Released seats go back on sale through the club's official channels. Whether they reach the general sale that non-members can buy from is something I cannot tell you.

Atleti Red & White, the paid membership for supporters living abroad (€20 a year), is not worth buying for tickets. The same FAQ states that Red & White members cannot buy discounted tickets or request away tickets, because those benefits belong to full members. Presale access is not on the list of benefits either.

Which agencies to check once the club has sold out

When the club has nothing left, the first place I look is P1 Travel. It is one of four companies that carry the "Agencia Autorizada" seal on the club's own Agencias page, and on 2 September its standard derby seats started at €375. With no 2026 face value to compare against, I cannot say how much of that is mark-up. P1 goes first anyway because standard seats come with a guarantee of up to three seats together, and you can add a hotel from €75 per person in the same booking. If you want the whole trip locked in at once, I would pay that price.

The e-tickets arrive "close to the event", and that is all the page says. There is nothing on it about refunds or about whether you know your seat number at the time of purchase. Stock moves, too. The €375 derby seats listed on 2 September had become "Tickets available soon" with no price by 8 September. Current listings are on P1 Travel's Atlético page.

If P1 has nothing, Hellotickets is next. It holds the same Agencia Autorizada seal, and on 2 September its derby listings started at US$304 with an average of US$735. The problem is the seat labels. Many listings only said "Shortside" or "Longside" with no block number, so which seat you get depends partly on the seller. The agency's authorisation does not vouch for where each individual listing comes from, and I would not call what you buy there an official ticket. Do not grab the cheapest listing; read the section label first. See the Atlético listings on Hellotickets.

Two things I would not touch. Private sales on social media or forums sit outside any authorised channel. Any listing claiming a seat in the Grada de Animación is for an area the club treats as members' and season-ticket holders' territory, and I would not buy it.

A derby day is not a normal matchday

I was at the Metropolitano for the derby on 29 September 2024. On the metro out, the carriage was singing the club anthem, the one everyone knows by its "Atleti, Atleti, Atlético de Madrid" chorus. In that carriage at least, the derby had started before we reached the stadium.

That match was stopped. According to LaLiga's report, in the 64th minute lighters and bottles were thrown at Courtois, the visiting goalkeeper, from home supporters in the lower tier of Fondo Sur, sections 127 to 133. It happened again in the 65th minute, and the referee halted the match. LaLiga's report gives two times for the stoppage, 67 minutes in the referee's account and 68:30 in the match director's log. A newspaper quoting the referee's own report says the players came back out 14 minutes later and play resumed 17 minutes after the stoppage.

The punishment shrank on appeal. The Competition Committee's first ruling was a three-match closure of the lower Fondo Sur tier and a €45,000 fine; the Appeals Committee cut that to one match and €3,000, and the closure was served against Leganés on 20 October 2024. The club expelled nine members for life and wrote a ban on face coverings into its internal rules.

The next derby, on 27 September 2025, ran without a stoppage. LaLiga's weekly report recorded one small object thrown in the 82nd minute and chanting from both sets of fans, nothing more. The same report places the Real Madrid supporters in the upper tier of Fondo Norte, sections 313-314 and 413-414. If the layout stays the same, an upper Fondo Norte seat could put you next to the away section.

For the Champions League second leg against Real Madrid in March 2025, club security was reported to be checking everything on the away side, from scarves and flags down to lighters. The stadium's own website lists "items that could be thrown" among the things you cannot bring in, and the LaLiga entry regulations posted by the club draw the line at objects over 500 grams that could be used as projectiles. Leave the lighter at home.

Expect the crowds as well. For the September 2019 derby, the Madrid regional government increased service on metro Line 7 by up to 64 per cent to cope with the numbers. For the September 2022 derby, a 21:00 kick-off, the club's matchweek "Mapa y horarios del estadio" notice put gate opening at 19:30. If the same notice appears this year, that is the figure to plan around.

You need to go wanting an atmosphere that is different from a normal matchday. Travel light and allow extra time.

Seats, bags and transport are covered elsewhere

What happens after you have a ticket belongs to other guides. Where to sit is in the Metropolitano seating guide, what you can bring in is in the bag policy guide, how to get there is in the transport guide, and how to spend the rest of the day is in the matchday Madrid guide. Whenever the sale status changes, the opening of this article and its check date will be updated.