BARCELONA, Spain (AP) — Barcelona's next Champions League match at home will be at the renovated Camp Nou stadium with partial capacity.
The club said Wednesday it will host Eintracht Frankfurt at the venue on Dec. 9 in the league phase of the European competition. About 45,000 tickets are expected to be available.
Barcelona said UEFA accepted the team’s request to return to the Camp Nou, “considering that all necessary requirements have been met.” The club needed an exemption from European soccer's governing body as regulations state that teams must use the same stadium for all four home games in the league phase.
“Barcelona is pleased to be able to compete again at its stadium and to continue advancing in the comprehensive transformation project of the new Spotify Camp Nou,” the club said.
On Monday, Barcelona announced its Spanish league game against Athletic Bilbao, on Saturday, will be its first at the Camp Nou since it began upgrading the stadium in June 2023 to expand capacity in Europe’s largest soccer venue from 99,000 to 105,000. Only 45,401 fans will be allowed in against Athletic.
More than 20,000 fans paid to watch the team practice at the Camp Nou on Nov. 7.
The highly indebted club secured 1.45 billion euros (then $1.6 billion) from multiple investors to undertake the project.
Barcelona had originally planned to be back playing at the venue as early as November 2024 to coincide with the club’s 125th anniversary. The team has played at the municipally owned 55,000-seat Olympic Stadium since the start of the 2023-24 season.
Another delay this summer led to the club scrambling to hold a Spanish league game at the 6,000-seat stadium located on its training grounds on the outskirts of the city in September.
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FILE - A Spanish La Liga soccer match is played between Barcelona and Las Palmas at the Camp Nou stadium in Barcelona, Spain, on Oct. 1, 2017. (AP Photo/Manu Fernandez, File)
Barcelona's players exercise during the team's first training session at the venue after its renovation at the Camp Nou stadium in Barcelona, Spain, Friday, Nov. 7, 2025. (AP Photo/Joan Monfort)
BERLIN (AP) — Rescuers said Wednesday that they have given up hope for the humpback whale that has become stranded repeatedly off Germany's Baltic Sea coast and now expect it to die in the inlet where it currently lies.
The whale swam into an inlet on the small island of Poel, near the port of Wismar, on Tuesday and got stuck again. Last week, it was rescued from even shallower water at Timmendorfer Strand, a resort town around 50 kilometers (over 30 miles) from its current location, with the help of an excavator, but it soon ran into trouble again.
In recent days, authorities have pursued a strategy of trying to give the exhausted mammal peace and quiet so that it can gather enough strength to swim away under its own steam, while sometimes approaching it with boats to motivate it to set off.
Burkard Baschek, the scientific director of the Ocean Museum Germany and the scientific coordinator of the rescue effort, said the whale was breathing at very irregular intervals on Wednesday and that drone photos showed little sign of activity in the sediment under the 12-15 meter (39-49 foot) animal. It barely reacted when approached.
The whale was a bit more active after rescuers left, “but it is not activity that gives us grounds for hope,” Baschek said at a televised news conference. “We firmly believe that the animal will die there.”
While the whale on two previous occasions was able to gather enough strength to free itself, it is now weaker and also faces falling water levels, “and the prospects that it will free itself are very small,” he said. “The approach of maximum rest and respect for nature demands at some point that we let it go.”
The drama captivated Germans, with the media sending detailed updates on its progress. The whale acquired the nickname “Timmy” during its coastal odyssey.
It was first spotted swimming in the region on March 3. It is not clear why the whale swam into the Baltic Sea, which is far from its natural habitat and it isn't suited to. Some experts say the animal may have lost its way when it swam after a shoal of herring, or during migration.
The animal always faced long odds to find its way out into the North Sea, itself a journey of several hundred kilometers (miles), and then to the Atlantic Ocean.
A humpback whale, that has become stranded repeatedly off Germany’s Baltic Sea coast in recent days has got stuck again and is pictured near the island of Poel in Weitendorf-Hof, Germany, Tuesday, March 31, 2026. (Marcus Golejewski/dpa via AP)
A Greenpeace boat approaches the humpback whale, which is still stuck off near the island of Poel, Germany, Wednesday, April 1, 2026. (Marcus Golejewski/dpa via AP)
