The Arsenal Advisory Board held their first meeting of 2026/27 last week, revealing some updates on the club’s plans for the Emirates Stadium.
Arsenal have confirmed that a meeting of the Arsenal Advisory Board took place last week on Thursday, September 24th, with senior club figures and supporter representatives attending the event in person and online.
The meeting provided some noteworthy updates on the Emirates Stadium, with the club stressing that their focus is on continued improvements to catering, safe-standing, hospitality and retail experiences, and upgraded visitor experiences.
Arsenal’s statement confirms that the club are not currently working on a “huge scale masterplan”, suggesting a significant capacity increase isn’t on the horizon.
The club did confirm that they’re still working on 5G mobile connectivity within the stadium on matchdays, and that they’re expecting improvements within this season.
Such improvements are long overdue, with Arsenal’s home stadium one of few top grounds not to have fast 5G or dedicated Wi-Fi.
Many of Arsenal’s big-six rivals either invested in Wi-Fi or 5G upgrades years ago, whereas Arsenal have been making unfulfilled promises for a long time now. The same talk of 5G improvements was circulating in the media last year in August, but it still hasn’t happened yet.
In all, this update is not the most exciting, but it was perhaps a predictable one. Talk of significant stadium capacity increases have always come with the asterisk that such upgrades would be prohibitively expensive to achieve.
Arsenal might never see net financial benefits from such changes, which would be very disruptive to the current fan experience in the meantime. Instead, the club are likely to invest in those more lucrative hospitality upgrades.
As for the 5G improvements, those are much more achievable, to the extent that they really should have happened already.
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