The City Ground

The City Ground holds 30,445, and Nottingham Forest have submitted planning applications for a redevelopment they say takes the stadium past 50,000. Away supporters are in the lower tier of the John Robertson Stand — the stand that was called the Bridgford until 2026.

Capacity — 30,445 today, over 50,000 on the plans

Forest's overall capacity is 30,445, which puts the City Ground among the smaller Premier League grounds. The club's planning submission for the redevelopment describes a design which "increases the stadium's capacity to over 50,000" — an increase of roughly two thirds, and one of the largest proposed at any English ground.

Both figures are real and only one of them is a stadium. A redevelopment with planning applications submitted is further along than an aspiration and still a long way from a turnstile, so 30,445 is the number this site ranks on and 50,000 is a plan with a date nobody has fixed. Treat any published capacity for this ground as carrying an expiry, and check which of the two a source means before comparing it with anywhere else.

One historical note the club is careful about, and so is this page: the Town Ground is not a former name for the City Ground. Forest identify it as a different, earlier ground on the opposite bank of the Trent, a few hundred yards away. The City Ground has been Forest's home since 1898.

Where do away fans sit at the City Ground?

The away section is the lower tier of the John Robertson Stand, and the away turnstiles are in the same stand. The Visitors' Ticket Office Collection Point sits beside them, opening 90 minutes before kick-off and — this is the detail that catches people — closing at half-time, after which supporters are not admitted.

Forest publish eleven wheelchair bays in the away section: five in block W2 and six in block X2. For ambulant disabled supporters the club names the most accessible seats precisely, at block X1, rows P and Q, seats 85 to 112. Six accessible parking spaces are available to visiting supporters at £10, in the Brian Clough Stand car park off Scarrington Road, on level gravel directly beside the away end; they are arranged through your own club rather than with Forest.

Two access limitations are stated plainly and both are worth planning around. Wheelchair-using away supporters cannot enter through the away end at all — they use the accessible home entrance in the John Robertson lower stand and are escorted across to the away section. And the only accessible toilet available to away supporters is in the home block between Y1 and Y2, reached by speaking to a steward. Neither is ideal and neither is hidden; the club describes both as consequences of the current stadium layout, which is part of what the redevelopment is meant to fix.

The John Robertson Stand, formerly the Bridgford

The stand housing away supporters changed its name in May 2026. Forest announced that "City Ground's Bridgford Stand [is] to be renamed the 'John Robertson Stand'", on a recommendation from the club's owner to its board, honouring the player Brian Clough called "the Picasso of our game". Robertson died on 25 December 2025, aged 72, having played 516 competitive games for Forest and scored 95 goals, delivering the cross for the winning goal in the 1979 European Cup final and scoring the winner in the 1980 one.

The practical consequence is that older guides describing the away end as the Bridgford Stand are describing the same seats under a name the club no longer uses — and that Forest's own history pages, written before the change, still say Bridgford. The last stand renamed here before this was the Peter Taylor Stand in 2015. The stand's most distinctive feature is unaffected: its unusually shaped roof exists because planning required it, so that sunlight still reaches the houses on Colwick Road behind it.

Sources and verification