Lens

The Stade Bollaert-Delelis is the legendary home of RC Lens, located at 83 rue Maurice-Carton in Lens, a former mining town in the Pas-de-Calais department of northern France. The stadium holds 38,223 spectators and has been the club's home since 1933, named after Felix Bollaert, an industrialist and former president of the Lens coalmining company, with Delelis added in honour of a later mayor. The ground sits in the heart of what was once France's most productive coalfield, a landscape of former pithead winding towers, slag heaps, and dense residential terraces that defines the character of Lens and of its football club.

RC Lens are inextricably linked to the working-class mining culture of the Pas-de-Calais, and the Bollaert-Delelis generates some of Ligue 1's most intense and authentic atmospheres. The club won their only league title in 1997-98 under coach Daniel Leclercq, and that championship was celebrated in these stands with scenes of extraordinary community joy. Lens subsequently competed in the Champions League group stage in 2002-03, welcoming elite European clubs to the mining town. The Virage Nord is home to the club's most fervent ultras groups, and the noise generated at Bollaert for top fixtures - particularly against Lille in the local derby - is considered among the loudest in French football.

The stadium underwent renovation for Euro 1984 and again for the 1998 FIFA World Cup, when it hosted four group stage matches. The ground's four covered stands provide protection from the often inclement northern French weather. Lens experienced a painful drop through the French football pyramid in the early 2010s, spending years in Ligue 2 and even lower, but their return to Ligue 1 in 2020 and subsequent Champions League qualification in 2023 brought renewed European attention to the Bollaert-Delelis. The club's extraordinary fanbase, which maintained passionate backing through the darkest years, is one of French football's great stories of community loyalty.