For a first match at San Mamés I would book the lower tier on one of the long sides, in a central block and from row 11 up. For an afternoon kick-off I would make that the Main Stand rather than the East Stand. If those blocks have gone, I would move to the upper tier on the same sides, and on a tight budget I would look at the upper North Stand or the South Stand.
Athletic Club's own sale lets you choose the block, row and seat, and for the match I checked it was cheaper than the agency listing. It usually opens about three weeks before the match. If it has not opened yet, has sold out, or cannot give you two seats together, an agency is the other route.
Information checked on 2 October 2026.
Most standard seats are in the 100s and 300s; the middle ring includes VIP areas
San Mamés has four stands, which the club calls Main, East, North and South in English and Tribuna Principal, Este, Norte and Sur on its Spanish ticket pages. The club does not use Gol Norte, Gol Sur or Preferencia, so if a resale listing does, go by the block number.
Each stand has two main tiers. The lower tier, Tribuna Baja, is numbered in the 100s and has 26 rows. The upper tier, Tribuna Alta, is numbered in the 300s and runs past row 30. Between them is a thin ring numbered 201 to 233, and on the club's 2026/27 seat plan most of it is marked as VIP, with the presidential box at 201. Some of it does turn up in the general sale. For Getafe on 25 October, blocks 207, 221 and 230 were labelled VIP and priced at €190 to €205, with catering and access to the area from 90 minutes before kick-off until an hour after the match, while block 223 in the South Stand was listed at €140 with no VIP label. The VIP blocks are a different purchase from an ordinary seat, and I leave them aside here.
The lower North Stand, blocks 105 to 110, is the Grada Popular de Animación, the singing section the club also calls Herri Harmaila. For 2026/27 the club seats its Gazte Abonoa holders there, the season tickets for 14- to 28-year-olds, by block and by age band, with 107 and 108 in the middle behind the goal. None of those blocks appeared in the general sale for the Getafe match, though the Club Athletic FAQ mentions a special sale of spare seats in the singing section 48 hours before a match. In the Getafe general sale as I saw it on 2 October, the seats on offer were in the lower tier of the Main, East and South stands and across most of the upper tier.
On price, the two long sides look the same. On the August 2023 and March 2024 price sheets, the latest the club published as PDFs that I could find, the Main and East stands shared one price list, row band by row band. For Getafe this season both started at €80, and the dearest lower seats left on each side were €125. What separates them is the sun, which I come to below.
The rows may change after this season. Reports at the end of September said the club plans to add rows to the lower and upper parts of each stand in summer 2027. The plan still has to go to the club's general assembly on 28 October and needs a permit from Bilbao city council, so the row numbers here are for 2026/27.
For a first visit I would sit downstairs on a long side, from row 11 up
People who have been say you see the game well from nearly anywhere in the ground, and I found five of them saying it. The choice comes down to the angle you want and what you pay for it.
My pick is a central block in the lower tier of either long side: 101, 102, 127 or 128 in the Main Stand, 113 to 116 in the East Stand. Within those blocks I would take row 11 or higher. When a first-time visitor asked on a local fan forum in August, three replies said to get some height in the lower tier, and one of them added that upstairs the lower rows are better.
That is the dearest part of the lower tier. On the August 2023 sheet the first five rows were the cheapest in each stand, €55 on the long sides, while rows 11 to 26 in the central blocks started at €155, and the March 2024 sheet kept the same pattern at slightly higher prices. For the match I checked, they were also the hardest to find. On 2 October, 23 days before the Getafe game, the only central lower block in the Main Stand with anything left was 128, with one seat at €90 and one at €125, and in the East Stand only 115 had seats, two at €125. That is one match, but on that evidence I would buy these blocks as soon as the sale opens.
If the central lower blocks have gone, I would go upstairs on the same side rather than down to the front rows. On the same day, the listing labelled 333-D, in the middle of the upper Main Stand, still had 150 seats at €90. The upper tier is steep. The architectural description of the stadium has all three tiers on a deep slope, and one visitor on Reddit says the top tier is steep enough that it does not stretch back as far as at other grounds.
Upstairs, the price depends on the row. On the August 2023 sheet the first six rows of the central upper blocks cost the same as the best seats downstairs, and the price dropped as you climbed. Following that reply on the forum, I would stay in the lower half of the upper tier and let the budget decide how low.
On a tight budget I would look at the ends. For Getafe the North and South stands started at €50, against €80 on the long sides, and when the club cut prices for the last three home matches of 2025/26, the upper North Stand and the South Stand were the ones that went down to €30. Two people answering first-time visitors suggested the upper North Stand in particular, directly above the singing section, one for the noise and the other for the view.
For the bigger matches, the general sale tends to leave only single seats, which I come back to in the buying section.
The East Stand faces the afternoon sun, and rain reaches the front of the lower South Stand
The club does not publish the stadium's orientation, so this part is my own reading. Working from map data and the gate numbers on the club's plan, the pitch runs north-west to south-east. The Main Stand is on the south-west side, facing north-east, and the East Stand is opposite it, facing south-west.
That puts the afternoon sun in front of the East Stand and behind the Main Stand. I worked out the sun's position for kick-offs at 14:00, 16:15 and 18:30 through the season, and in every month, whenever the sun was up at those times, it was roughly between south and west, behind the Main Stand and in the eyes of anyone in the East Stand. How many rows it reaches depends on the roof, and I found no published cross-section, so I cannot tell you where the shade line falls. Three days before Atlético's visit on Saturday 5 September, a 16:15 kick-off, a thread on a local fan forum named the East Stand among the parts of the ground worst hit by the sun.
For an afternoon kick-off I would therefore take the Main Stand. Later kick-offs help. By my calculation an 18:30 start is after sunset from late October to early February, and at 21:00 the sun is still a few degrees above the horizon only in roughly the first three weeks of August and from about 20 April to the end of the season.
Rain is a narrower problem. The roof was extended in 2016 after members complained about getting wet. In a thread on the same forum last October, regulars said you rarely get wet unless the wind is strong, and three of them said that when rain does get in, it is at the front of the lower South Stand. That rests on a handful of accounts, and they do not agree on where the wet rows end: two people mentioned rows 5 and 8, while another in row 6 said they stay dry. On a wet, windy day I would still keep away from the front rows of the lower South Stand, which are also among the cheapest in the ground.
The club's sale was cheaper for the match I checked, but central seats and pairs go early
Athletic sell through the club's ticket page and at the ticket windows between gates 6 and 7. Online you choose the stand, block, row and seat, up to four tickets per purchase. Wheelchair places, in the last row of the lower tier with step-free access from the street, are sold only at the San Mamés ticket office.
The club's FAQ says the general sale usually opens on a Monday at 10:30, three weeks before the match, but the timing varies from match to match, so the match page is the place to check. For Getafe on 25 October the seats were already on sale when I looked on 2 October, 23 days before.
Members of Club Athletic, the club's paid supporters' membership, get a presale before the general sale, with up to two tickets each. For Getafe it opened four days before the general sale. For the matches the club designates as TOP, which include European and Copa del Rey ties and league visits from Real Madrid, Barcelona and Real Sociedad, the club's FAQ says Premium members get in a further 24 hours earlier. Online sales can run until kick-off. The ticket windows' hours are announced in the week of each match, usually for match day and sometimes the day before as well; for Getafe they open on the Sunday from 10:30 to 14:00.
How long the general sale lasts depends on the fixture. Deia reported that the general seats for Sevilla on 22 August sold out on the day they went on sale, leaving only VIP places. Season-ticket holders can hand their seats back to the club up to 24 hours before a game, though, so seats can reappear later in the sale. Five days before that Sevilla match, a visitor on the local forum noted that about 700 had come back.
The harder part is sitting together. On the Athletic forum on Reddit, people tell visitors that for the bigger matches most of what is left in the general sale are single seats and two together are hard to find. Others there say that against smaller sides, blocks of seats together often turn up, and one says the presale has them for all but the biggest fixtures. The club's site lets you choose your seats, but only from the ones still free. If the sale is open and you can see two seats side by side where you want them, buy them there.
An agency covers the cases where that does not work: the sale has not opened, it has sold out, or the seats left are scattered. For the Getafe match, the club's own screen on 2 October started at €50 in the North and South stands and €80 on the long sides, while P1 Travel, an agency, listed the same match from €119 the day before. P1's terms allow a price above face value plus a booking fee per ticket.
On 1 October P1 was selling Athletic home matches up to February 2027 for immediate purchase, in a single long-side category. Its FAQ says seats booked together come together, "unless we say otherwise". The exact row and seat are assigned close to the match, and the tickets arrive by email one to three days before it. Confirmed orders are final; if a match is called off, P1's own terms apply. P1 sells mainly into the home sections and has no children's prices. If that suits you, see Athletic Club home tickets on P1 Travel. Booking through the agency links in this article may earn Cholismo Lab a small commission, at no extra cost to you.
Away fans enter at gate 20, in the corner of the East and South stands
The away section is sold only through the visiting club. The club's ticket page for the Getafe match says so, citing Spanish law, adds that the area is separated from the home fans, and says Athletic can refuse entry to a visiting supporter holding a ticket bought through another channel. Away fans go in at gate 20, where the East and South stands meet. An older version of LaLiga's stadium sheet placed them in blocks 321 and 322 of the upper South Stand, behind glass and metal mesh; the current version names only the gate. When Osasuna visited in 2025, their notices said Athletic required each ticket to carry the member's name and ID number.
The rule works the other way for anyone in a home seat. P1's pages carry the organiser's no-away-fans rule, and LaLiga's current sheet lists away support in a home section as grounds for refusal or removal when it puts safety at risk.
For Atlético supporters, this season's league visit has already gone: Athletic won 3-0 on 5 September. The return fixture is scheduled for the Metropolitano on the weekend of 22–23 May 2027, with the exact date and kick-off time still to be confirmed. If both clubs are still in LaLiga, the next league trip to San Mamés comes in 2027/28, unless the Copa del Rey draw brings them together first. Whenever it comes, the way in is Atlético's away allocation, not a home ticket. The Atlético ticket guide explains who can apply for it.
Getting to San Mamés and getting in
Metro lines 1 and 2 stop at San Mamés station, a couple of hundred metres from the ground, and the Cercanías C1 and C2 also stop at San Mamés. The Euskotren tram has two stops nearby, San Mamés and Sabino Arana, and the club lists Bilbobus lines 38, 56, 57, 62 and 28. The stadium has no car park for fans; the club points drivers to paid car parks nearby, including at Termibus and the Euskalduna.
From the airport, the Bizkaibus A3247 runs every 15 minutes to Termibus, the Bilbao Intermodal bus station, which on the map sits just south of the stadium. Termibus has manual and automatic left-luggage facilities, open from 7:00 to 22:00 on weekdays, 8:00 to 21:00 on Saturdays and 9:00 to 22:00 on Sundays and holidays. I would use them for an afternoon kick-off and not for a 21:00 one. Athletic's current FAQ also has a question about luggage storage at San Mamés, but I could not retrieve the answer from the public page, so check the club's current guidance before relying on it.
In the club's recent match notices, the gates open 90 minutes before kick-off. An older version of LaLiga's stadium sheet says there is no re-entry during the match, smoking is banned anywhere on the site, and supporters are subject to security checks and searches at the entrance. The same sheet asks you to sit in the seat printed on your ticket and show the ticket if stewards or the Ertzaintza, the Basque police, ask for it. The current version bans anything over 500 g that could be thrown, flares and fireworks, and alcohol.
Booking as a neutral visitor. If the club's sale is open and has the seats you want, buy there; for the match I checked, it was the cheaper option. Otherwise, Athletic Club home tickets on P1 Travel are the other route, mainly in the home sections.