Holm Jalgpallipark () is a

football Football is a family of team sports that involve, to varying degrees, kick (football), kicking a football (ball), ball to score a goal (sports), goal. Unqualified, football (word), the word ''football'' generally means the form of football t ...

stadium in

Tartu Tartu is the second largest city in Estonia after Tallinn. Tartu has a population of 97,759 (as of 2024). It is southeast of Tallinn and 245 kilometres (152 miles) northeast of Riga, Latvia. Tartu lies on the Emajõgi river, which connects the ...

Estonia Estonia, officially the Republic of Estonia, is a country in Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by the Gulf of Finland across from Finland, to the west by the Baltic Sea across from Sweden, to the south by Latvia, and to the east by Ru ...

. Located next to the

Estonian National Museum The Estonian National Museum () founded 1909 in Tartu is a museum devoted to folklorist Jakob Hurt's heritage, to Estonian ethnography and folk art. The first items for the museum were originally collected in the latter part of the 19th centur ...

and in the Raadi district, it is the home ground of

Tartu JK Welco Tartu Jalgpalliklubi Welco is a semi-professional football club based in Tartu, Estonia. The club was founded in 2008 when a group of university students decided to participate in IV liiga South, which is 6th and also the lowest tier of Football ...

. The stadium is named after Welco's primary sponsor Holm Bank.

History

Planning and construction

In 2012, Tartu Welco began exploring ways to construct their own home ground and by 2015, the first sketches of the stadium in Raadi had been created by architect Andres Lunge. In June 2017, the plans were approved by the Tartu City Government, who issued a building permit for the stadium in the autumn of 2019. The construction of the stadium commenced in November 2019 and the artificial turf field was opened for trainings in December 2020. However, the completion of the grandstand saw delays due to the rise of construction costs that were caused by the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic (also known as the coronavirus pandemic and COVID pandemic), caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), began with an disease outbreak, outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China, in December ...

and the

Russian invasion of Ukraine On 24 February 2022, , starting the largest and deadliest war in Europe since World War II, in a major escalation of the Russo-Ukrainian War, conflict between the two countries which began in 2014. The fighting has caused hundreds of thou ...

. In the spring of 2023, Welco started a

crowdfunding campaign Crowdfunding is the practice of funding a project or venture by raising money from a large number of people, typically via the internet. Crowdfunding is a form of crowdsourcing and alternative finance, to fund projects "without standard financial ...

and gathered €60,000 to finish the construction. In total, the budget of the project mounted to €910,000, of which €425,000 was for the construction of the football pitch and outdoor areas, €345,000 for the construction of the grandstand and €140,000 for the parking lot.

Opening

Although the football field was opened to trainings and lower league football matches already during the 2021 season, the official opening of the stadium took place on 10 June 2023, when Welco faced Tammeka U21 in front of 694 spectators.

References

{{Reflist Football venues in Estonia Sport in Tartu Buildings and structures in Tartu Sports venues completed in 2023 2023 establishments in Estonia