A last dance on the ice. A Munich institution says goodbye

Generations of Munich residents have had their fun here. Whether they skated their first pirouettes, skated for the first time, or met for a date at the legendary evening disco skate. For more than five and a half decades, the Olympic Ice Sports Center has been one of the most popular leisure attractions, a wonderful meeting place for young and old. On April 28, public skating will come to an end. Then it's time to say goodbye to a beloved Munich institution - with one last dance on the ice.

The Ice Stadium was the first sports arena in the Olympic Park. It was first planned in 1964 when Munich was looking for a site for a modern ice hockey arena. When the city council rejected the idea of roofing over and converting the Prinzregentenstadion, the decision was made in February 1965 to build an ice sports center with two ice rinks on the Oberwiesenfeld - at a time when the bid for the Summer Olympics was not yet an issue. After the IOC awarded Munich the bid for the 1972 Olympic Games in April 1966, the project had to be redesigned at short notice during construction. From a pure ice rink to an arena suitable for other indoor sports.

In late 1966, the then-unfinished recreational ice rink (today's SoccArena) opened to the public, and in January 1967, the SC Riessersee and FC Bayern (!) ice hockey teams inaugurated the arena with a 3-3 tie. Numerous major events followed, from the 1969 World Table Tennis Championships to the 1972 Olympic boxing matches and the 2014 Electric Wheelchair Hockey World Championships. The arena also hosted a number of international ice hockey matches against top nations such as the former Soviet Union, Canada and Finland - and of course it was home to the many Munich ice hockey clubs that laid the foundation for their great successes here: the championships of the EC Hedos (1994) and the Munich Barons (2000), and of course the four DEL titles of the EHC Red Bull Munich (2014, 2015, 2016, 2023). The crowning glory of the rink's long history would surely be another German championship with a triumph by the Munich Eishackler in the playoff finals at the end of April.

Incidentally, in the 2010/2011 season, the then second-division basketball team of FC Bayern also played on the temporary floor here - and celebrated their promotion to the BBL before moving to the Rudi-Sedlmayer-Halle (now BMW Park).

The EHC ice skaters and the FC Bayern basketball team will now share a new home arena, the SAP Garden in the southwest of the Olympic Park. Public skating will also find a new home here: the ultra-modern arena with its ice park next to the main hall offers three ice surfaces for recreational and popular sports. An interim use as an action sports center is currently being planned for the Olympic Ice Stadium and Training Hall before a decision is made on the future of the site at a later date.

If you're looking to get back on the ice and play some curling, here are the hours of operation through April 28. After that, a long ice age will come to an end.