Olympic Stadium (Stade olympique)

The Olympic Stadium, known in French as the Stade olympique, stands at 4545 Avenue Pierre-De Coubertin in the Hochelaga-Maisonneuve district of Montreal, Quebec, Canada. It was the centrepiece of the 1976 Summer Olympics, Canada's first Games, and was designed by the French architect Roger Taillibert in a bold concrete style that earned it the nickname of the Big O. The oval bowl of prefabricated concrete ribs was completed in time for the Games, but construction delays and costs meant that the inclined tower, at 165 metres the tallest inclined tower in the world, and the retractable roof were not finished until 1987; the roof itself later proved unreliable and was replaced by a fixed one in 1998. The stadium's debt, the subject of public controversy, was paid off in 2006. The Olympic Park complex includes the Montreal Biodome, the Planetarium and the Olympic Village, and the Esplanade surrounding the stadium is used for events. The Games themselves are remembered for Nadia Comaneci's perfect scores in gymnastics and for Canada being the first host nation not to win a gold medal in its own Games. The stadium hosted the Montreal Expos baseball club until 2004 and the Alouettes football team in earlier years. The architecture, a late example of the modernist brutalist-adjacent tradition, is now studied as a symbol of Quebec's modernisation in the 1960s and 1970s. Conservation has focused on structural repairs to the concrete and on the long-planned replacement of the roof. The tower observatory, accessed by funicular, is closed until its planned reopening in spring 2027, but the exterior and esplanade remain open. The Games' 50th anniversary in 2026 prompted commemorative events and exhibitions.