Brisbane 2032 currently proposes 37 competition venues for its 28 Olympic and 22 Paralympic sports. Around four in five are existing or temporary facilities rather than new builds — a deliberate cost and sustainability call that means many of the "venues" are places already well known to Queenslanders, just upgraded for the world stage.
The Games' Centre of Gravity
Most venues, including the ceremonies and flagship events, sit within this zone.
Brisbane Stadium, Victoria Park
A new 63,000-seat stadium hosting the opening and closing ceremonies and athletics — the single largest venue investment of the Games, and Queensland's future home for AFL, Test cricket, and major entertainment events.
National Aquatic Centre, Spring Hill
Replacing the Centenary Pool site, expanding to more than 25,000 seats for the Games before scaling back to a permanent 8,000-seat community and elite training facility afterwards.
Chandler Sports Precinct
Home to the UCI-certified Anna Meares Velodrome and BMX Supercross Track, plus the Brisbane Aquatic Centre. AusCycling is relocating its national high-performance centre here.
RNA Showgrounds, Bowen Hills
Transformed for equestrian events and doubling as the main Athlete Village, housing more than 10,000 athletes and officials just 1.5km from the CBD.
Queensland Tennis Centre
A new 3,000-seat show court plus 12 new match courts, adding to Pat Rafter Arena's existing capacity.
Brisbane Convention & Exhibition Centre
Repurposed for table tennis, badminton, fencing and taekwondo — a good example of the "use what's already there" approach behind most of the venue plan.
South East Queensland's Other Two Hubs
Both zones lean on 2018 Commonwealth Games infrastructure, with a major new build on the Sunshine Coast.
Royal Pines Satellite Village
One of the confirmed satellite athlete villages, supporting Gold Coast Zone venues — several of which were also used for the 2018 Commonwealth Games.
Maroochydore Athlete Village & Arena
A newly integrated village, arena and cultural precinct built into the heart of the Maroochydore City Centre redevelopment.
Sunshine Coast Stadium
Growing from a 1,046-seat community venue to 10,680 permanent seats — a tenfold capacity increase for rectangular-field sports.
Regional & Interstate Venues
True to the "whole of state" promise, several sports head well outside Brisbane — with football preliminaries even reaching Sydney and Melbourne.
Football preliminaries and early knockout matches are also proposed for Sydney and Melbourne — a first for an Australian Games, and a nod to grounds already etched into Olympic history.
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Enquire NowThe Brisbane Stadium at Victoria Park
The centrepiece venue has had the longest and most contested path of anything in the Games programme. After two earlier plans — a Gabba rebuild, then Suncorp Stadium for ceremonies with athletics at QSAC — the state settled on a new 63,000-seat stadium at Victoria Park, announced in March 2025 following the Games Independent Infrastructure and Coordination Authority's 100-day review.
The design team is Cox Architecture and Hassell with Japanese firm Azusa Sekkei, with Arup and Schlaich Bergermann Partner on structure. The same firms have Perth's Optus Stadium, the Adelaide Oval redevelopment and the MCG behind them. Cost estimates sit around $3.6 to $3.8 billion within the wider $7.1 billion venue programme.
In March 2026 the government confirmed the precise siting, centrally within the park near Gilchrist Avenue, in an east-west configuration settled after discussions with the AFL and Cricket Australia. Earthworks were slated to begin mid-2026 for completion ahead of the Games.
It will host the opening and closing ceremonies and athletics, then convert to a permanent home for the Brisbane Lions and Queensland cricket from 2033.
What Else Is Being Built or Rebuilt
Four other major venue projects sit alongside the stadium.
A new National Aquatic Centre at Spring Hill transforms the heritage-listed Centenary Pool site, taking swimming, diving, water polo and artistic swimming. The RNA Showgrounds at Bowen Hills becomes the main Athletes Village — housing more than 10,000 athletes and officials for the Olympics and over 5,000 for the Paralympics — with the Main Arena rebuilt as a 20,000-seat venue that keeps working for the Ekka afterwards. The Queensland Tennis Centre gains a permanent show court and twelve new match courts. A dedicated para-sport facility is part of the same programme.
The Gabba hosts cricket during the Games and is then scheduled for demolition, with the site earmarked for urban renewal.
The Victoria Park Question
The stadium is not universally welcomed, and a visitor planning a trip should know the context. Victoria Park is inner-city public green space, and the community group Save Victoria Park has campaigned against building on it. The park also carries a heritage listing, although the state has legislated to bypass normal planning processes for Games venues.
A revised draft masterplan released in May 2026 committed to keeping roughly two-thirds of the parkland as publicly accessible green space around the stadium precinct. The debate over the balance is ongoing and worth following if the precinct matters to your plans.
Victoria Park, the Showgrounds and the Centenary Pool site are the exceptions — active construction between now and the Games, and not places to plan a visit around. The Ekka continues at the Showgrounds through the build.
Most of these places are open now, which is the advantage of a Games built largely on existing infrastructure. Suncorp Stadium runs public tours. The Gabba, the Queensland Tennis Centre and the Gold Coast venues all host regular events you can attend on an ordinary weekend.
Seeing the Venues Before the Games
If you are following one sport, check where its preliminary rounds sit before booking accommodation. The final may be in Brisbane while the early matches are a thousand kilometres north.
Football preliminaries typically spread further still, with interstate stadiums in Sydney and Melbourne historically used for group matches in Olympic football tournaments — an arrangement the Sydney 2000 Games also used.
Part of the 2025 plan moved events out of the south-east entirely, which is what makes this a whole-of-state Games rather than a Brisbane one. Regional Queensland centres including Toowoomba, Cairns, Townsville, Rockhampton and Mackay carry preliminary rounds in various sports.
Regional and Interstate Venues
The region currently has no direct passenger rail to Brisbane, which is precisely what The Wave is being built to fix. By 2032 the connection should make the Sunshine Coast a realistic base for spectators attending events in Brisbane as well as locally.
The Sunshine Coast is the third zone and the one whose transport picture changes most between now and 2032. Venues centre on the Sunshine Coast Stadium at Kawana and the Kawana sports precinct, with Alexandra Headland and the beaches taking events suited to open water and sand.
The Sunshine Coast Venues
For a visitor the Gold Coast is the easiest zone to build a trip around: substantial existing accommodation, an established tourism industry, light rail along the strip, and the hinterland an hour inland when you want a day away from the sport.
Carrara Stadium, the Gold Coast Sports and Leisure Centre at Carrara, the Gold Coast Aquatic Centre at Southport and the Broadwater Parklands all featured in 2018 and return for 2032. Beach events use the coastline itself, which is the least infrastructure-dependent venue any Games has.
The Gold Coast carries the second-largest cluster, and almost all of it already exists — a direct legacy of the 2018 Commonwealth Games, which left the city with venues built to international standard barely a decade before.
The Gold Coast Venues
Why So Many Venues Already Exist
The high proportion of existing and temporary venues is deliberate rather than a compromise. The International Olympic Committee's reforms since 2020 have pushed host cities towards using what they have, and Brisbane's bid was built on that basis from the start.
For a visitor it has a practical upshot: most of the places hosting Olympic sport in 2032 are open now. Suncorp Stadium, the Gabba, the Queensland Tennis Centre, the Gold Coast and Sunshine Coast venues and the regional stadiums are all operating venues you can visit on a tour today rather than construction sites.