AFL football has returned to Tasmania, with UTAS Stadium hosting its first home fixture of the 2026 season on ANZAC Day yesterday, next to a live Fairbrother construction site, the new glulam-and-concrete Centre West Stand at the heart of a $130 million total redevelopment due for completion in October next year.
The $130 million redevelopment, whose timber-concrete engineering was first reported by Wood Central last April, has temporarily reduced capacity at the historic York Park ground to roughly 9,000 seats across the 2026 AFL season, less than half its pre-construction footprint of 19,500. The cap is set to lift to about 17,000 once new seating areas come online in 2027, with the venue running at full Australian Tier 2 standard from the 2028 season.
The redevelopment, designed by Populous and Philp Lighton Architects, will carry mass timber glulam columns and beams across the new Centre West Stand façade and concrete and mass timber plates across the inside of the redeveloped Eastern Stand roof and concourse seating, with off-site prefabrication of the glulam frame chosen to cut on-site construction time and lower the building’s embodied carbon.
Engineers are now driving 20-metre steel piles through layers of soft mud and 19th-century buried fill into bedrock to stabilise the site, where the water table sits just 200 millimetres below the surface across what was originally swampland and Launceston’s mid-1800s landfill before becoming the city’s showgrounds.
A 19,000-square-metre field reconstruction is also underway to prevent flooding across the playing surface, with the existing ground remaining open for AFL, AFLW, VFL and Big Bash League fixtures throughout the construction phase.
The radiata pine has been sourced from Australian plantations, with the timber chosen over a steel alternative on grounds of construction speed and carbon emissions.
Tasmanian builder Fairbrother (also the contractor behind St Luke’s, the tallest mass timber building in the state) is rolling out the works in phased completions, with the Western Stand Infill Seating due September 2026, the redeveloped Eastern Stand carrying 3,629 new seats due by March 2027, and the new Centre West Stand scheduled for October 2027.
The redeveloped venue, jointly funded with $65 million each from the Australian and Tasmanian Governments, sits on an oval-shaped ground that already hosts Hobart Hurricanes Big Bash League fixtures, AFLW, VFL, and North Launceston Football Club matches, alongside Hawthorn’s four AFL home games each year.
“Launceston already has a great sporting legacy, and this project will ensure that continues for generations to come,” Jess Teesdale, the Federal Member for Bass, said at the September 2025 works launch, where she also pointed to the significantly increased crowd capacity expected once the new stands come online.
Federal Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government Minister Catherine King welcomed the works at the same launch, saying she could not wait to see her beloved Richmond Tigers play the Tasmania Devils at the upgraded venue once the new club enters the AFL.
It comes as Tasmania Devils CEO Brendon Gale confirmed earlier this month that the AFL’s 19th team remained locked in for a Round 1, 2028 entry, with Hobart’s Macquarie Point Stadium pushed back to early-to-mid 2030 and the Devils’ first match at the new Hobart venue likely to fall in Round 1, 2031.
Until Macquarie Point opens, Gale told SEN’s Dwayne’s World, the Devils will split home games between Hobart’s Ninja Stadium and the redeveloped UTAS Stadium, leaving Launceston’s glulam-and-concrete venue to carry the bulk of the club’s northern fixture list across the first three AFL seasons.
The Centre West Stand, the new Eastern Stand and the Western Stand Infill Seating will combine to deliver an AFL Tier 2 venue at full capacity for the start of the 2028 AFL season, when the Tassie Devils run out for their first home fixture in Launceston.
