In designing for thousands, the margin for error becomes zero. Fire safety is not an option. It is the foundation.
Saudi Arabia’s bid for the FIFA 2034 World Cup has placed renewed focus on the development of high-capacity, multi-functional sports venues. These stadiums represent more than just architectural ambition. They are critical infrastructure assets that must deliver on performance, experience, and safety under all conditions.
Among the many design challenges faced by large venues, fire and life safety remain among the most complex and high-risk elements. Ensuring safe evacuation for tens of thousands of spectators, staff, and VIP guests requires precision planning, advanced engineering, and a deep understanding of both international codes and local regulatory expectations.
Fire Safety Considerations for Major Sports Complexes
Stadiums function as high-density assembly occupancies. Their configuration introduces a combination of risks not typically encountered in standard buildings. These include mass egress from seating bowls, vertical circulation across multiple levels, internal retail and hospitality areas, below-grade parking zones, and integration with transport infrastructure.
Evacuation performance cannot rely solely on prescriptive code tables. Smoke movement, crowd density, fire growth rates, and external access for firefighting all interact in real-time. A robust fire safety strategy must therefore be developed early in the design process, based on scenario testing and performance analysis.
The use of performance-based design, including computational fluid dynamics and evacuation modelling, has become essential for validating design decisions and ensuring compliance in complex venues.
What we learned from Lusail Stadium
Lusail Stadium, the primary venue for the FIFA World Cup 2022 in Qatar, was designed to accommodate more than 80,000 spectators. Its fire safety strategy presented several critical technical challenges that required careful resolution. Design Confidence served as one of the lead fire engineering consultants on the project, with the fire strategy developed under the technical leadership of Aaron Mc Daid MIFireE. The scale and complexity of the stadium tested the limits of conventional fire engineering and required a fully performance-based approach across all aspects of the design.
The enclosed nature of the stadium bowl, combined with a fully roofed structure, created a high-risk smoke retention zone. Smoke control was achieved through advanced CFD modelling and mechanical extraction design tailored to internal fire scenarios, including those originating in back-of-house and hospitality areas.
Premium lounges and VIP decks required specific treatment due to extended travel distances and complex egress paths. Evacuation modelling tools were used to confirm that required safe egress times remained within acceptable limits under various load conditions.
The stadium’s integration with commercial and operational zones introduced a need for careful fire zoning and compartmentation, ensuring clear separation between spectator areas and ancillary functions without compromising architectural openness.
Fire service access was also a major concern. Given the scale of the stadium and pedestrianized landscape zones, fire truck intervention strategy had to be carefully aligned with both code requirements and practical access constraints.
Lusail’s success demonstrated the importance of detailed planning, early-stage engagement, and active dialogue with civil defense authorities. It established a regional benchmark for stadium fire strategy and highlighted the need for technical expertise beyond standard compliance.
Saudi Arabia’s Stadium Vision
In Saudi Arabia, stadiums are being built as part of large urban and entertainment districts. These venues are designed for year-round events, not just sport. They include community zones, fan parks, VIP facilities, and even cultural venues. The challenge here is not just code compliance. It is designing for a variety of uses and changing conditions. The Saudi Building Code is evolving and continues to align with international best practices. But many of these projects go beyond what the code has accounted for. That is where expert fire strategy becomes essential.
Design Confidence is currently supporting multiple stadium and entertainment projects in the Kingdom. Our role is to simplify complexity, provide clarity, and work directly with authorities, operators, and design teams.
What We Bring
Design Confidence offers an integrated fire and life safety consulting service tailored to the demands of large-scale stadium and venue design. The team provides end-to-end support from concept to authority approval, with strategies grounded in performance-based analysis and regional regulatory understanding.
Fire and life safety engineering is at the core, supported by in-house expertise in Crowd Dynamics and Accessibility and Inclusive Design, making the overall strategy robust and defensible.
Crowd Dynamics Engineering is led by Bachar (Bash) Kabalan, who specialises in the analysis of crowd behaviour, ingress and egress patterns, and movement modelling for high-density venues. His team’s work informs evacuation performance, event-time planning, and critical flow scenarios that directly impact fire strategy validation.
Accessibility and Inclusive Design is led by Dania Al-Adhami CPABE-II, whose work ensures the venue complies with local and international accessibility standards while maintaining functional inclusivity for all user groups. This becomes particularly important when validating evacuation models that include persons with reduced mobility and VIP-specific movement profiles.
Fire engineering, crowd modelling, and accessibility are further strengthened through structured risk assessments delivered at key design stages. These risk assessments identify potential failure points, evaluate likelihood and consequence, and align mitigation measures with operator expectations and code requirements.
Scope of services typically includes:
Fire strategy development for seating bowls, VIP levels, concourses, and mixed-use areas
CFD modelling to validate smoke control under various fire scenarios
Evacuation simulation studies using realistic crowd profiles and event conditions
Accessibility compliance strategies aligned with evacuation planning
Development of event-mode evacuation and operational management protocols
Fire command centre planning and system interface coordination
Civil Defence liaison and submission support
Risk assessments aligned with SBC, NFPA, and project-specific risk frameworks
This combined approach allows for a unified and technically sound life safety strategy, which is not only compliant but also operationally aligned and responsive to real-world conditions.
Looking Ahead to FIFA 2034
The FIFA 2034 World Cup is a once-in-a-generation opportunity for Saudi Arabia. The stadiums that will host these games must reflect the country’s ambition, capability, and commitment to safety.
Design Confidence is proud to be part of that effort. Our focus is not just code compliance. It is about enabling confident design decisions. It is about reducing risk without compromising creativity. And it is about making sure that every fan, every operator, and every firefighter can trust the space they are in.
A stadium should be iconic. But more importantly, it must be safe.
Anam Asad is one of the team leaders of Design Confidence’s Dubai office. As a Principal, he works with the fire engineering team and performs team activities, deliverables, and te...
Read more
