While you watch the World Cup, we measured every famous British ground from above

The World Cup is on, and every match is happening an ocean away. Britain's grounds got left on the bench this summer — so we put them to work.

We ran the same aerial rooftop read we run for homeowners — the one that measures your roof from above before an installer ever visits — across the most famous stadiums in Britain. Roof by roof, stand by stand. Then we ranked them. The full league table is live now.

The winner isn't Wembley

Top of the league: the Principality Stadium in Cardiff. Wales' national ground has around 33,000 m² of measurable roof — enough for an estimated 5 MW of solar, generating roughly 4.0–4.8 GWh a year. That's in the region of 1,600 homes' worth of electricity, from one retractable roof. Wales 1, England 0.

The chasing pack:

• Etihad Stadium — about 3.7 MW of roof capacity, an estimated 2.6–3.2 GWh a year
• Wembley Stadium — about 3.5 MW, an estimated 2.8–3.5 GWh a year
• London Stadium — about 3.3 MW, an estimated 2.8–3.5 GWh a year
• Anfield — about 3 MW, an estimated 2.2–2.7 GWh a year

Across all 17 grounds we could measure cleanly: roughly 35 MW of unused roof capacity — enough to power somewhere near 11,000 average homes. Sitting there. Above the season tickets.

ScreenshotThe stadium solar league table — ranked by roof capacity

One club already did it

Here's the part we like most. While every ground on this list could go solar, Ashton Gate actually has. Bristol City's ground has run a real 460-panel array on its West Stand roof since 2016 — around 95,000 kWh a year, used on site. It sits near the bottom of our table on raw roof size, and it's still the one wearing the "Already has solar" badge. Theorising is free; Ashton Gate installed.

Where's Old Trafford?

Not in the table — and that's deliberate. Every figure we publish comes off a measured aerial read that passes a quality gate: a confirmed address, a confirmed building, high-quality imagery, and numbers that add up against the size of the ground. Old Trafford, Tottenham's ground, Hampden and a few others didn't give us a clean read — so they're out. We don't guess, and we don't pad a league table with numbers we can't stand behind. If your ground is missing, that's why. When we can measure it properly, it goes in.

The same honesty applies to every number above: these are full-roof ballparks, not feasibility studies. Stadium roofs come with structure, loading and planning questions that only a commercial survey answers. But the scale of what's sitting up there? That's real, and now it's measured.

Your roof isn't famous. Same read, though.

The exact measurement we pointed at Anfield works on your semi in Nottingham. Postcode in, and we'll read your roof from above — direction, sun, the panels it could take, and an honest benefit range. Free, no account, no sales call.

Check your own roof · See the full stadium league table · More of the UK's biggest roofs