There are few better excuses for exploring Europe than football. And whatever shopping centre is nearby. And personally I always love a good local supermarket – to remind me of how bad things are back home in the UK.
Pick a fixture, find a cheap flight, spend Saturday wandering around somewhere you’ve never been before and eventually follow a trail of scarves towards a stadium. The football might be terrible. You might not understand a word of the songs. But who cares.
After a cerveza or two, you’ll be fluent… in your own mind.
The obvious destinations are brilliant, but Barcelona, Madrid, Milan and Munich aren’t exactly secrets. For this list, we’ve gone smaller: cities with interesting football clubs and stadiums, but enough character beyond the turnstiles to make the entire weekend worthwhile. Here’s my own personal budget holiday planning article for Milan if you fancy having a read.
But for right now, here are five places we’d happily build a football trip around.
Braga, Portugal – SC Braga
Population: Around 200,000
Club: SC Braga
Stadium: Estádio Municipal de Braga
If you like unusual football stadiums, you need to see this one.
SC Braga’s Estádio Municipal de Braga was constructed for Euro 2004 and designed by Portuguese architect Eduardo Souto de Moura. Rather than surrounding the pitch with four conventional stands, the stadium has just two enormous stands running along either side of the pitch, with one end opening towards the rock face of the former Monte Castro quarry.
UEFA describes it as one of European football’s most distinctive stadiums, while the design earned Souto de Moura international architectural acclaim. Have a little search of it and you’ll understand why!
Braga itself deserves more than simply arriving before kick-off and leaving afterwards. It’s one of Portugal’s oldest cities, filled with churches, squares, cafés and narrow streets, while the spectacular Bom Jesus do Monte sanctuary sits just outside the centre and is recognised as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Then there’s the football. Braga have gradually established themselves as Portugal’s most persistent challenger to Benfica, Porto and Sporting, winning domestic cups and reaching the 2011 Europa League final.
For collectors, it’s also worth visiting the club shop. Braga’s red-and-white shirts have long carried an unmistakable Arsenal influence, the result of club president José Antunes Guimarães reportedly returning from a trip to London inspired by Arsenal’s colours during the 1940s.
A beautiful city, a genuinely bizarre stadium and a club regularly competing in Europe. Good start.
Bergamo, Italy – Atalanta
Population: Around 120,000
Club: Atalanta
Stadium: New Balance Arena
Bergamo might be one of Europe’s easiest football weekends to underestimate.
Plenty of British travellers know the name because their budget airline has deposited them at Bergamo Airport before quietly sending them towards Milan. Resist that temptation. Stay here instead.
The historic Città Alta, or Upper City, sits above the modern town behind enormous Venetian defensive walls. Those fortifications have been recognised by UNESCO, and you can reach the old city by funicular before spending an afternoon among cobbled streets, cafés and spectacular views across Lombardy.
Down below you’ll find Atalanta.
The club has become one of European football’s great modern success stories, culminating in a stunning 3-0 victory over Bayer Leverkusen to win the 2024 Europa League. It was Atalanta’s first major European trophy and ended Leverkusen’s remarkable 51-match unbeaten run.
Yet Atalanta still feel intrinsically connected to Bergamo. Their stadium is embedded within the city rather than stranded beside a motorway somewhere, while the black-and-blue shirts and club crest appear everywhere once matchday arrives.
For shirt collectors, Atalanta are particularly fun because the club’s recent rise has produced an increasingly interesting trail of European shirts, limited editions and memorabilia associated with players such as Papu Gómez, Josip Iličić, Duván Zapata and Ademola Lookman.
Just don’t accidentally spend the entire weekend in Milan. Or do, it’s your holiday, after all!
Bruges, Belgium – Club Brugge
Population: Around 120,000
Club: Club Brugge
Stadium: Jan Breydelstadion
Bruges already feels slightly unreal before anybody introduces football.
Canals weave through a medieval centre filled with cobbled streets, Gothic buildings and old market squares, with UNESCO recognising the historic centre as an outstanding example of a medieval European settlement.
Then Saturday arrives and thousands of people start wearing blue and black.
Club Brugge are one of Belgium’s great football institutions, with a history stretching back to the nineteenth century and a European pedigree that includes reaching the 1978 European Cup Final, where they lost to Liverpool at Wembley. They remain the only Belgian club to have reached the final of Europe’s premier club competition.
The club plays at the Jan Breydelstadion, which it shares with city rivals Cercle Brugge. It’s an older ground by modern European standards, but that actually adds something to the trip. This isn’t a polished stadium dropped into a newly built entertainment district; it feels like a proper piece of Belgian football.
Bruges is also compact enough that a football weekend doesn’t require military planning. Explore the historic centre, find somewhere for Belgian beer and chips, head towards the stadium and repeat whichever parts of that process you enjoyed most afterwards.
Probably the beer. Or chocolate. Or both.
San Sebastián, Spain – Real Sociedad
Population: Around 190,000
Club: Real Sociedad
Stadium: Reale Arena
San Sebastián – Donostia in Basque – sits on Spain’s northern coast around the beautiful La Concha Bay. The city is famous internationally for its food culture, particularly the small pintxos bars scattered throughout the Old Town.
You could quite comfortably spend an entire weekend moving between them.
At some point, however, we’d recommend watching Real Sociedad.
The club have spent more than a century representing San Sebastián and Gipuzkoa, winning consecutive Spanish league titles in 1980/81 and 1981/82 during perhaps the greatest period in their history.
Real Sociedad play at the Reale Arena, formerly known as Anoeta. A major redevelopment removed the athletics track that once separated supporters from the pitch and transformed it into a much more intimate football stadium.
The Basque identity surrounding the club also gives the trip a cultural dimension that feels noticeably different from visiting Madrid or Barcelona. Look around the city and you’ll see the club’s blue-and-white colours everywhere.
Collectors should keep an eye out for Real Sociedad shirts too. The classic blue-and-white stripes have produced some wonderful designs over the years, particularly those associated with the title-winning early 1980s sides and later players including Xabi Alonso, Antoine Griezmann and David Silva.
Come for the football. Stay because you’ve found another pintxos bar.
Lens, France – RC Lens
Population: Around 32,000
Club: RC Lens
Stadium: Stade Bollaert-Delelis
Our final choice might be the most football-centric of the lot.
Lens has a population of only around 32,000 people.
Its football stadium holds more than 38,000.
That tells you almost everything you need to know.
RC Lens play at the Stade Bollaert-Delelis, a wonderfully imposing ground whose capacity can exceed the population of the town it belongs to. The club itself describes Bollaert as one of the emblematic stadiums of French football.
Lens grew around coal mining, and that industrial history remains deeply connected to the identity of the football club. The wider Nord-Pas de Calais Mining Basin is now recognised by UNESCO, preserving the landscape and communities shaped by centuries of mining.
Their red-and-yellow colours fill the town on matchdays, while the club’s supporters have developed a reputation for creating one of France’s most atmospheric football experiences. Lens won Ligue 1 in 1997/98 and reached the Champions League the following season, famously beating Arsenal at Wembley.
If you’re interested in football culture rather than simply ticking famous stadiums off a list, Lens should be very high on your European travel plans.
Why Smaller European Cities Make Brilliant Football Trips
The beauty of visiting somewhere like Lens or Bergamo is that the football club isn’t simply another attraction competing for attention.
It often feels like part of the city’s identity.
You notice stickers on lampposts. Shirts hanging in cafés. Murals. Old club photographs behind bars. Then, a few hours before kick-off, the whole place starts gradually moving in the same direction.
For collectors, these trips are even better. Visit the club shop, search for independent shirt stores, pick up a programme or scarf and suddenly you’ve brought home something that actually belongs to the weekend rather than another airport fridge magnet.
Braga gives you extraordinary architecture. Bergamo offers a beautiful old city and one of Europe’s great modern football stories. Bruges combines medieval streets with proper European Cup history. San Sebastián gives you Basque football culture alongside some of the best food you’ll eat on an away day.
And Lens? Lens is what happens when the football club feels almost too big for the town containing it.
Which is never a bad thing really, is it?
Which of these European Cities have you already visited?