The German Football Museum in Dortmund will open in October 2015. On Sunday October 25th, the Museum will open its doors to the public with a great celebration scheduled to take place on site. Two days prior, on October 23rd, there will be an opening gala with North-Rhine Minister President Hannelore Kraft, DFB President Wolfgang Niersbach, Dortmund's senior mayor Ullrich Sierau and various other guests from sport, politics and society.
Built in three years over 7,000 square metres, the German Football Museum will be the first permanent exhibition on the history of German football with interactive and multimedia enactments as well as more than 1,600 exhibits.
Niersbach: "Display of extraordinary exhibits"
"Our goal was to bring together the wonderful tradition and the timeless fascination of football at a special place. The visitors to Germany's Football Museum can look forward to a display of extraordinary exhibits and gripping audiovisual presentations," announced DFB President Wolfgang Niersbach.
The German Football Association (DFB) initiated the project for a museum after the World Cup in Germany in 2006, using excess funds from the World Cup tournament and sponsor money of a total of 17.5 million Euros in order to realise this project. North-Rhine Westphalia supplied 18.5 million Euros for the construction of the museum, making the total budget 36 million Euros. The city of Dortmund supplied a central inner city area for the location of the museum.
"Football museum will add to the charisma of Dortmund"
Dortmund's senior mayor Ullrich Sierau said: "The Football museum will add charisma to the city of Dortmund and will and create a whole new meaningful link between football and culture. The Rhine-Ruhr region will gain a new national and international attraction."
The museum will be implemented and run by the non-profit DFB Charity German Football Museum GmbH, which is made up in equal parts by the DFB and the city of Dortmund. Managing director Manuel Neukirchner spoke about the current building situation: "Two insolvencies from executing building companies have created some jam-ups in our closing stages of construction. Despite these issues, we will be able to complete the building of the permanent exhibition by August and open our doors after the necessary commissioning process in October."