Bohemians to Remain at Dalymount Park Until May 2027

Bohemians will remain at Dalymount Park until the end of May 2027 after pushing to shorten their time away from Phibsborough during the stadium’s €63.75 million redevelopment.

The club had been preparing to leave at the end of the current League of Ireland season, but an amended construction programme means work can begin at the Tramway End while matches continue elsewhere in the ground. The terrace, first erected in 1928, will be demolished and the floodlights removed later this year, with the rest of Dalymount staying open until Bohs finally move out in May.

It’s a slightly odd way for one version of Dalymount to disappear. There won’t be one final match followed by a locked gate. Parts of the place will start coming down while Bohs are still turning up every week.

The first big change will be the lights. The club’s home game on 23 October is due to be the final fixture under the current Dalymount floodlights, ending Friday-night football at the ground for the opening months of 2027. Bohs will instead have to use weekend daytime slots, with exact arrangements for both the men’s and women’s teams still to be agreed. That creates its own bit of fixture juggling, given the women already use Dalymount on Saturdays.

The extra months at home weren’t requested simply because nobody fancied saying goodbye yet.

Chief commercial officer Daniel Lambert explained that the club wanted to stay until the point where construction made it impossible.

“Our absolute priority is the financial security of our club when we're out of Dalymount. Income projections become uncertain, costs skyrocket.”

“Given that, we were insistent that once it became apparent this week we will stay till the final moment when other works begin.”

That probably explains the decision better than any attempt to dress it up. Once Bohs leave Dalymount, every home game becomes more complicated and more expensive. The club will have to hire other venues, alter matchday operations and work around commercial arrangements in stadiums that aren’t its own.

There’s no published figure for how much staying until May saves, so putting a number on it would just be guesswork. Bohs will, though, avoid several extra months of those costs and keep staging matches in the area where the club’s matchday business already exists.

When they do leave, it won’t be for one straightforward groundshare either.

The men’s team will use more than one venue during the remainder of 2027 and throughout 2028. Richmond Park is expected to take many of the fixtures, while the redeveloped RDS has been reported as a possible option for games where demand is greater. Bohs haven’t confirmed the individual venues yet and plan to hold an information meeting with members about next season’s arrangements.

For a member-owned club, the caution around that period away makes plenty of sense when you look at how closely Dalymount and Bohs’ finances have been tied together over the past 15 years.

Dublin City Council bought the stadium from Bohemians for €3.8 million in 2015, helping the club deal with debts accumulated during a much more precarious period. The council then began the process of replacing the ageing ground with a modern municipal stadium.

The numbers attached to that plan have changed rather dramatically since.

A new Dalymount was being discussed at around €20 million a decade ago. By November 2025, Dublin City Council said the cost had risen to €63.75 million, with €25 million coming from government and councillors approving €34 million in borrowing to get the development over the line.

There have been plenty of revisions along the way, some of them fairly understandable when construction costs have spent the past few years behaving like transfer fees in the final week of August.

The current design is for a municipal stadium of just over 8,000 capacity. Dublin City Council’s plans include around 6,240 seats, standing terraces at either end, a new grass pitch turned onto a north-south axis, modern facilities for players and officials, community space and a public route through the eastern side of the site linking the North Circular Road with Connaught Street.

That municipal part is important to how the ground is meant to function once it opens. Dalymount won’t simply exist for Bohemians fixtures. Dublin City Council has spoken about the site as a wider sporting and community asset, while questions around rental, events and the stadium’s wider operating model have formed part of the discussion around the borrowing required to build it.

The capacity has also created some debate. Council officials confirmed last year that the current design won’t meet UEFA Category 4 requirements, meaning certain European matches would still have to be moved elsewhere if Bohs progress far enough in UEFA competition. The standing terraces requested as part of the design are one reason behind that.

For now, though, the more immediate concern is getting the ground built and getting Bohs back into it.

The club expects to return for the start of the 2029 League of Ireland season, more than a century after Bohemians first made Dalymount home in 1901.

A lot has happened there in between.

Dalymount has hosted Ireland internationals, European ties, cup finals, league title celebrations and gigs ranging from Thin Lizzy and Bob Marley to Kneecap. Bohs’ final European fixture in the old ground already came this summer, when Ross Tierney’s late winner against Ballkani gave it a suitably dramatic send-off from continental football.

Now the rest of the goodbye will happen much more slowly.

The floodlights will go first. The Tramway End follows. Bohs will play on for a few more months, move across Dublin for the remainder of 2027 and 2028, and then, if the schedule holds, come back to a very different ground in 2029.

Before any of that, there’s still 23 October.

One last Friday night under the old Dalymount lights, before things start looking very different around Phibsborough.