The O2 Arena

The O2 Arena is London’s 20,000-capacity indoor concert room, set inside the vast former Millennium Dome on the Greenwich Peninsula. Its defining feature is structural as much as musical: the arena was built beneath the Dome’s cable-net canopy, turning a millennium exhibition building into a venue for end-stage shows, in-the-round productions, awards ceremonies and sport. Capacity shifts with each production’s stage and technical footprint, though 20,000 is the headline figure.

A dome becomes an arena

The building began life as the Millennium Dome, constructed for the Millennium Experience, which opened on January 1, 2000. After the exhibition closed at the end of that year, the site entered a redevelopment chapter that created a purpose-built arena within the existing shell. The reborn complex opened to the public on June 24, 2007, with Bon Jovi playing the first public arena concert—a clean declaration of its intended scale from night one.

Its first season also supplied the defining early residency. Prince completed 21 sold-out shows in 2007, finishing on September 21 after playing 504 songs across 52 hours onstage, according to the venue. That run created The O2’s 21 Club, an in-house honour for performers who reach 21 arena dates, and remains a useful measure of the building’s appetite for extended, production-heavy residencies.

The room on show night

Programming centres on major international touring acts alongside comedy, televised awards, tennis, boxing and other arena-scale events; the concert calendar spans pop, rock, R&B, hip-hop, alternative, folk and metal. Layout changes show by show: standing-floor tickets have no assigned positions, seated-floor areas sit on a flat surface, and the arena also runs in-the-round configurations. Food and drink outlets operate around the concourse, while premium Level 1 Deck seats add bar-stool seating and in-seat service. Check the event floorplan before buying, especially for floor versus upper-level seats.