Where to sit at Mestalla in its farewell season, and which side is out of the sun

For a first match at Mestalla I would sit in the 200s or the 300s, close to halfway. If the sun will still be up at kick-off, I would make that the main stand, the Tribuna on Avenida de Suecia. People who go to Mestalla describe it as the only stand fully under a roof, and on my reading of the stadium's orientation it has its back to the afternoon sun. For a 21:00 kick-off I would take the opposite side, which was cheaper for the match I checked, and on a tight budget I would look at the Sillas Gol Alto blocks behind the goals or the Grada de la Mar.

Valencia call 2026/27 the last season at the Camp de Mestalla and plan to move to the Nou Mestalla in summer 2027, without a date yet. Everything below is about the old ground this season.

On the club's own website you choose your seat on a map. Five days before the Athletic Club match on 17 October, the sale listed 54 blocks, and outside the centre of the main stand most were down to one, two or three seats.

Information checked on 12 October 2026.

How I read a Mestalla block number: the first digit for height, the second for the stand

Valencia sell each seat as a zone name and a three-digit block number, and the sale screen shows the two together: TRIBUNA CENTRAL 213, SECTOR 5 CUB. 255, GRADA DE LA MAR 753. I found no explanation of the numbering from the club, but the block plan it publishes with its 2026/27 season-ticket prices follows a pattern. As I read it, the first digit is how far you are from the pitch, from 1 at the front to 7 at the top of the outer ring, and the second is the stand: 1 for the main stand, 3 for the north end, 5 for the long side on Avenida de Aragón and 7 for the south end. So 214 is the second band of the main stand, and 753 is the very top of the Aragón side.

The main stand, the Tribuna, runs along Avenida de Suecia. Working up from the pitch, it has the Tribuna Baja (112 to 116), then the Tribuna itself (211 to 217, with the Central blocks 213 to 215 in the middle and the Preferente blocks 212 and 216 either side), then the Anfiteatro, with 313 to 315 in the centre. The Aragón side stacks more zones on top of one another: the Numerada blocks in the 150s and 250s, the Grada Central (351 to 358), the Grada Alta (451 to 458, with 552 to 557 behind) and the Grada de la Mar at the top (651 to 653 and 751 to 753).

The south end is the Gol Gran and the north end the Gol Xicotet, literally the big and the small goal in Valencian. Each climbs through the Sillas Gol blocks in the 300s and 400s to the Gol Gran or Gol Xicotet sections in the 500s to 700s.

The front of the south end is the Grada de Animación, blocks 181 and 183, where the second digit, 8, breaks the pattern. It is the singing section, open only to season-ticket holders aged 16 to 30 and fenced off from the seats around it. Blocks 533 and 733, in the corner where the north end meets the Aragón side, held the away supporters at a Betis match in November 2024, and they were not in the list I saw for the Athletic match.

For a first visit I would sit in the 200s or 300s, near halfway

Five people on Reddit and Tripadvisor, writing between 2020 and 2023, say you can see the game from almost anywhere at Mestalla, and one of them puts that down to the slope. The club itself quotes The Telegraph's verdict that its stands are steeper than those of any other major stadium in Europe, and more than ten people on r/soccer describe how steep it is, some of them mentioning vertigo.

The advice gets more specific on height. When visitors ask on the Valencia subreddit where to sit, two regulars point to the centre of the second and third bands, 212 to 216 and 314 to 316, and a visitor who sat in the 300s opposite the benches was happy with the full view of the pitch. A season-ticket holder in the 300s says most tourists go to the top tier, where the view is wide but a long way from the action, and that the middle is better if you can afford it. The second of those two regulars, whose own season ticket is in the centre of the main stand, adds that in the Tribuna you want row 7 or higher.

My picks on the main stand are 212 to 216 in the Tribuna, from row 7 up, and 313 to 315 in the central Anfiteatro. On the Aragón side they are 253 to 256 in the Numerada and the middle of the Grada Central, 353 to 356. For Athletic Club, five days before the match, the main-stand blocks started at €102 in 212 and 216, €114 in the Tribuna Central and €92 in the central Anfiteatro. Across the pitch, 253 to 256, 353 and 356 started at €86, while 354 and 355 were not in the sale's list for that match. Which side I would book depends on the kick-off time, which I come to in the next section.

The upper rings give a fine view and a long climb. Five people mention the stairs, and one says that reaching the Gol Gran or the Grada de la Mar means climbing seven floors without a lift. There are railings in front of the seats up there: two visitors say they leave the view clear, while a reviewer in 2019 compared the front rows of the steep rear stands to a prison cell and suggested booking a few rows back. If you are uneasy with heights, I would stay below the 500s, which rules out the Grada de la Mar.

On a tight budget I would still go up, but at the ends or the top of the Aragón side. For the Athletic match the cheapest seats were €46, in the Grada de la Mar (753) and the Gol Gran Bajo (574), with one seat left in each, and €58 in the Sillas Gol Alto blocks, the fourth band behind each goal, where 432, 433, 472 and 473 were on sale. Two regulars, writing in 2015 and 2024, say that in the Grada de la Mar you should take the lowest row you can get, which does not fit the 2019 reviewer who found the front rows of the steep stands behind railings, so I cannot tell you whether the very front row is the one to want.

Regulars say only the main stand is fully under a roof, so for a day game I would sit on that side

Six people, writing between 2021 and 2026, say the main stand, the Tribuna and the Anfiteatro above it, is under the roof, and three of them say it is the only part of the ground that is. One of those three, the season-ticket holder in the 300s, calls the other three sides mostly uncovered. The regular who recommends row 7 says that in the 200s you are sheltered from rain from about row 6 or 7 up.

The club's zone names do not quite match that. Away from the main stand, some blocks are sold as CUB., covered, and the blocks in front of them as DESC., uncovered. On the plan, the covered blocks sit behind and above the uncovered ones, which I read as meaning they are under the overhang of the tier above. They cost more, but they are also a band higher: for the Athletic match, block 157 (DESC.) was €68 or less and block 257 (CUB.) €74. I could not find out how far that overhang reaches, so I would not count on it for shade or rain.

I found no orientation for the stadium from the club, so this is my own reading of map data. The pitch runs roughly north to south, with the main stand on the west side along Avenida de Suecia and the Aragón side to the east. That puts the afternoon sun, from the south-west and west, behind the main stand and in the faces of people on the Aragón side and at the north end. Five accounts from 2016 to 2026 put the Aragón side, the upper tiers and the ends in the sun, three of them from people who sat there. One, beside block 354, wrote in November 2021 that a day of 22 degrees felt like 30 and that they spent half-time in the concourse. When LaLiga put Valencia against Barcelona at 16:15 on Sunday 6 September, the local site Deporte Valenciano complained in advance that Valencia is still very hot in September.

On my reading of the orientation, the main stand gives you the best chance of keeping the afternoon sun out of your eyes, so when the sun will be up at kick-off I would pay for it, in the 210s or the 310s, and in the Tribuna from row 7 up, where the regular quoted above says the roof starts, though I could not check which of those rows are in shade at a given kick-off time. At 21:00 it matters much less. One regular says the sun is not an issue for a 9pm kick-off, though another, who walked 1.2 km from the centre to an August friendly against Newcastle, still had some sun on the way when they arrived at about 20:30. For an evening league match I would take the central blocks on the Aragón side, which for the Athletic match started at €86, against €102 to €114 in the Tribuna.

The club's sale was down to scattered seats, except in the centre of the main stand

Valencia sell home tickets through the club's ticket page, where you pick a block on a map and then the seat. When it introduced variable pricing in 2024/25, the club said tickets go on sale at a base price that can rise as the match gets closer and as blocks fill. There are no children's prices, and under-16s need their own ticket and must be with an adult throughout.

Mestalla holds 49,419. In June, as the club launched its season-ticket campaign for this final season, ElDesmarque counted 40,174 season-ticket holders and reported that the club would take no new ones outside the singing section, that about 6,500 tickets a match would go on general sale and that single tickets would rise by around 15%. When I looked at the sale for Athletic Club on 12 October, five days out, it listed 54 blocks at prices from €46 to €114, and most of them were down to one, two or three seats. I could not tell whether the blocks missing from the list had sold out. Only the centre of the main stand had seats in any number: 133 in Tribuna Central 213 and 47 in Tribuna Preferente 212.

The regulars describe the same pattern. One says a single ticket in a given block is easy to find and that even two together is difficult, and people have asked how to get seats together in threads from 2019, 2023, 2024, 2025 and 2026. Two people, in August 2025 and January 2026, noticed that 213 was the one block with plenty left. If you need a pair in one of the blocks I recommend, I would start with 213 and the Preferente block next to it, 212 (€102), the two blocks with the most seats listed when I looked, though the counts do not show whether any two of those seats were side by side. Season-ticket holders can release their seats until three hours before kick-off, so blocks that look sold out can refill. I would not rely on the ticket windows on the day: the club says there may be nothing left to sell, and for the full house against Barcelona in August 2024 they did not open for sales at all.

The Atlético match is on the club's list but has no sale button yet. Last season the club put its second-half fixtures, Atlético included, on sale together on 13 January. Two people, writing in 2021 and 2025, say the Atlético match costs more than games against smaller sides, and the 2025 one adds that it is still cheaper than Barcelona or Real Madrid.

If the club's sale has not opened, as for Atlético at the time of writing, or you need seats together away from the centre of the main stand, a ticket marketplace is the other option. It is not the club, and it showed a different starting price on the day I checked. On 12 October, Hellotickets' English site listed the Athletic match from $95, with an average of $173, while the cheapest seat in the club's own sale was €46. Those are the lowest listed prices, in two currencies and not for the same seats, and neither figure is a checkout total. Valencia point buyers to the club's website, and the club's internal rules list the improper use of tickets and season tickets among serious offences, citing as examples letting someone other than the holder use them outside the club's own channels and reselling season tickets. I could not tell where the marketplace's seats come from. If you still want to look, see Valencia CF tickets on Hellotickets. Booking through the agency links in this article may earn Cholismo Lab a small commission, at no extra cost to you. If you are going as an Atlético supporter, read the next section before you buy anything.

Atlético fans should go through the away allocation and follow its instructions for the gate

Atlético's visit is on 9 May 2027 in LaLiga's calendar, matchday 35, with the kick-off time still to be set.

In its report on Valencia against Betis in November 2024, LaLiga recorded the visiting supporters in the Gol Xicotet Alto, blocks 533 and 733, the high corner where the north end meets the Aragón side. LaLiga's 2019 guide to the stadium sends away fans in through gates N15 and N16 on Calle Artes Gráficas, behind the north goal, and locals and visiting fans who describe the away section put it high at the north end, in a corner. I could not confirm the blocks or the gate for Atlético's visit in May 2027, so go by what the away-ticket instructions for that match say.

Valencia's internal rules say that everyone entering the away section is checked against a list drawn up by the visiting club, and only the person named can go in. They also say that if visiting supporters are found to be buying seats elsewhere in the ground fraudulently, directly or through someone else, the club will tell the visiting club and the security coordinator so that the purchase can be revoked and the money refunded. Spain's stadium entry rules add that away-fan behaviour in a home area is grounds for refusal or removal when it puts safety or public order at risk.

For Atlético members, the way in is the club's away allocation. Members apply in their personal area until 48 hours after the kick-off time is confirmed, alone or in a group of up to six, and if requests exceed the allocation, places go by length of membership. The tickets are on paper and in the member's name, collected in person in the city where the match is played, and shown at the turnstile together with a wristband and an identity document. For the 2023 visit they cost €30. The Atlético ticket guide explains who can apply.

If you do end up in a home seat, for instance as a neutral with friends, the advice on Reddit is consistent: no away colours, and no celebrating an away goal. Three people said so in one 2023 thread, while four others, between 2023 and 2026, said that visiting fans scattered around the home stands rarely run into trouble. I would leave the Atlético shirt at home and keep quiet when Atlético score.

Take metro line 5 to Aragón, and leave big bags behind

Valencia list two metro stations for Mestalla. Aragón on line 5 is about 250 metres from the ground in a straight line, to the south, and Facultats on line 3 is about 500 metres to the north-west, also in a straight line. Buses 10, 32, 71 and 80 stop nearby. From the airport, lines 3 and 5 both leave from the ground floor of the regional terminal, and as line 5 also stops at Aragón, you can ride it to the ground without changing.

Backpacks up to 40 by 30 by 20 cm are allowed after a security check. Suitcases and large sports bags are not. The club's left-luggage point inside only takes things such as pushchairs, walking frames and children's footballs, and its rules say it does not accept backpacks, suitcases or motorbike helmets, so leave luggage somewhere else before you come. Drinks have to be non-alcoholic, in plastic bottles under 500 ml, with the cap taken off.

There is no re-entry once you are in, and smoking and vaping are banned anywhere in the stadium. If you are running late, a set of gates the club calls puertas de guardia stays open after kick-off, and its FAQ shows where they are.

Booking as a neutral visitor. If the club's sale is open and has the seats you want, buy there, since it is the club's own sale and you choose the exact seat. If the sale has not opened, or you need seats together away from the centre of the main stand, Valencia CF tickets on Hellotickets are the other route. Atlético members travelling with the club should use the away allocation.