Every NBA Arena Ranked From Oldest to Newest

Madison Square Garden is by far the oldest arena in the NBA. It opened in February 1968 and is the only building in the league that predates 1990. The newest is Intuit Dome in Inglewood, California, which opened in August 2024 as the home of the LA Clippers. In between sit 28 arenas, 17 of which opened between 1990 and 2005.

Below is the complete list of all 30 current NBA arenas, ordered from oldest to newest, followed by the stories behind the extremes: why the Garden's 1968 date is the one that counts, why so many teams renovate instead of rebuild, and which new buildings are actually under construction.

All 30 NBA Arenas, Oldest to Newest

Notes on the table. Capacities are basketball configurations, which are lower than a building's concert or maximum standing-room number. Two cells are intentionally blank. Target Center's published basketball capacity varies between two figures across reliable sources, and we do not print a number we cannot pin down. Delta Center is in the middle of a three-phase, multi-season rebuild of its seating bowl that is changing the count from year to year, so any figure printed today would be wrong by next season. Within the same year, arenas are ordered by opening date — United Center (August) before Rocket Arena (October), TD Garden (September) before Moda Center (October), and the seven 1999 buildings running from Scotiabank Arena in February to Kaseya Center on December 31.

Madison Square Garden: The Oldest, and Why 1968 Is the Date

Madison Square Garden is 22 years older than the next-oldest NBA building. That gap is not close, and it is not likely to shrink.

The confusing part is the name. There have been four Madison Square Gardens. The first opened in 1879 at Madison Square on East 26th Street. The second, a Stanford White design, replaced it in 1890 and was torn down in 1925. The third — "The House That Tex Built," after promoter Tex Rickard — stood on Eighth Avenue between 49th and 50th Streets from 1925 to 1968, and it is where the Knicks played their first two decades.

The building the Knicks play in today is the fourth Garden, at Eighth Avenue and 33rd Street above Penn Station. It opened on February 11, 1968, at a cost of $123 million. That is the date that counts, because it is a different structure in a different location — the earlier Gardens were demolished, not renovated. The 1968 date is the arena's, not the franchise's or the brand's.

What keeps the Garden from feeling like a 58-year-old building is a $1 billion gut renovation carried out in three offseason phases from 2011 to 2013. It widened concourses, replaced every seat, rebuilt the lighting and video systems, and added the two suspended "Sky Bridge" walkways that hang over the floor. The footprint and the steel are 1968; almost everything a fan touches is not.

Renovate or Replace? The Question Every Old Arena Faces

Eighteen of the 30 NBA arenas are now at least 25 years old, and every one of those franchises has had to answer the same question: spend a few hundred million on a renovation, or a couple of billion on a replacement.

Most have chosen renovation, and the reason is arithmetic. A gut renovation buys 15 to 20 more years at a fraction of the price and does not require assembling a new site in an expensive downtown. Recent examples:

• Rocket Arena (Cleveland, 1994) spent roughly $185 million in 2018-19 on expanded concourses and new systems. The project removed three sections of upper-level seating, which is why its basketball capacity dropped from 20,562 to 19,432.
• State Farm Arena (Atlanta, 1999) went through a near-total interior rebuild in 2018 that reshaped the bowl and cut capacity to 17,044.
• Delta Center (Salt Lake City, 1991) is midway through a roughly $525 million renovation running from 2025 through 2027 — a new lower bowl, suspended sideline "gondolas," and a reconfiguration to serve both the Jazz and the NHL's Utah Mammoth properly.

Replacement is rarer and much more expensive. The Warriors left Oracle Arena for the privately financed Chase Center in 2019; the Clippers left Crypto.com Arena for the $2 billion Intuit Dome in 2024. Both franchises were motivated by something a renovation cannot fix: they were tenants in someone else's building.

That same calculation plays out in football, where the price tags run higher still — see 8 New NFL Stadiums Opening This Decade (and What They Cost).

The Newest Arenas

Intuit Dome (2024) is the newest building in the league by five years. It opened on August 15, 2024, in Inglewood, roughly a mile from SoFi Stadium, and cost about $2 billion — paid for privately by Clippers owner Steve Ballmer. Its signature features are "The Wall," a 51-row single-tier baseline section sold only to Clippers season-ticket holders and modeled on the standing terraces of European soccer, and the Halo Board, a double-sided 4K video ring covering roughly 38,000 square feet. It also has more than 1,100 toilets and urinals, about three times the league average. It hosted the 2026 NBA All-Star Game.

Chase Center (2019) in San Francisco was the previous newest, and the first NBA arena in decades built entirely with private money. Fiserv Forum (2018) in Milwaukee and Little Caesars Arena (2017) in Detroit round out the recent wave.

Between Barclays Center in 2012 and Golden 1 Center in 2016, the league went four years without a new building. Between Chase Center in 2019 and Intuit Dome in 2024, it went five.

Worth keeping in perspective: even the largest of these buildings is small next to venues in other American sports. United Center's 20,917 is less than a fifth of what the biggest college football stadiums hold — see The 15 Biggest College Football Stadiums in America, and Every Stadium That Has Hosted a Super Bowl for the buildings the NFL rotates through.

The 10 Arenas Shared With NHL Teams

A third of the league shares its building with a hockey team. Shared buildings mean shorter turnarounds, a convertible floor over an ice sheet, and a scheduling puzzle every winter.

Delta Center is the newest addition to that list. The Utah Mammoth — the franchise that relocated from Arizona in 2024 — moved in alongside the Jazz, which is a large part of why the arena is being rebuilt around a bowl that works for both sports.

Crypto.com Arena is the odd case going the other way. It housed two NBA teams and an NHL team for 25 years until the Clippers left for Inglewood in 2024, leaving the Lakers and Kings.

Naming Rights: Why This List Goes Stale Fast

Only a minority of NBA arenas still carry the name they opened with — 18 of the 30 have been renamed at least once. Three of them were renamed during 2025 alone:

• Rocket Arena (Cleveland), renamed in February 2025 from Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse — a rebrand rather than a new sponsor, following Rocket Companies' own corporate naming.
• Xfinity Mobile Arena (Philadelphia), renamed in May 2025 after 15 years as Wells Fargo Center.
• Mortgage Matchup Center (Phoenix), announced in October 2025. The Suns' building has now been America West Arena, US Airways Center, Talking Stick Resort Arena, PHX Arena, Footprint Center and Mortgage Matchup Center.

Miami's arena is the champion of churn: American Airlines Arena, then FTX Arena, then briefly Miami-Dade Arena after the FTX collapse, then Kaseya Center in 2023 — four names in a building that is not yet 30 years old. That pattern is not unique to basketball; see 10 Stadiums That Changed Names the Most and Every Stadium Named After a Bank, Ranked.

The buildings that have never been renamed are a short list: Madison Square Garden, United Center, American Airlines Center, Barclays Center, Golden 1 Center, Little Caesars Arena, Fiserv Forum, Chase Center, Intuit Dome, FedExForum, Toyota Center and Target Center.

Confirmed Arena Projects in the Pipeline

Two replacement arenas are genuinely moving, and one large renovation is underway.

Oklahoma City — Continental Coliseum, targeted for 2028. This is the furthest along. The Thunder's replacement for Paycom Center broke ground on March 26, 2026, on a site across the street from the current building. The roughly $900 million project is funded largely by a 72-month one-cent city sales tax, with $78 million from MAPS 4 and $50 million from the team's ownership group. The city will own it; Legends Global will operate it. Continental Resources bought the naming rights in March 2026. The deal keeps the Thunder in Oklahoma City through at least 2053.

Philadelphia — new South Philadelphia arena, targeted for 2030-31. After abandoning a downtown plan at Market East, Harris Blitzer Sports & Entertainment and Comcast Spectacor announced a 50-50 joint venture in January 2025 to build a shared arena in the South Philadelphia sports complex near the old Spectrum site. It will host the 76ers, the Flyers and Philadelphia's incoming WNBA franchise. The site was confirmed in April 2026. Team officials have publicly targeted 2031 while hoping for 2030; if it slips, all three teams stay at Xfinity Mobile Arena.

Salt Lake City — Delta Center renovation, through 2027. Not a new building, but a rebuild substantial enough to belong on this list. Phase 1, a new lower bowl, was finished in October 2025. Phase 2 adds suspended gondolas and premium spaces beginning in May 2026. Phase 3, a "dynamic slope" tying the upper and lower levels together, follows the 2026-27 season.

Several other clubs have publicly discussed renovations or replacements without a signed, funded, shovel-ready plan. Those are worth watching, but they are not projects yet, and this page only lists the ones that are.

One more thing that could reshape this list: expansion. In March 2026 the Board of Governors voted to formally explore expansion bids for Las Vegas and Seattle, with reporting pointing at a 2028-29 target. Nothing has been approved, and no arena has been committed to a new franchise — but if it happens, two more buildings join this table, and both markets already have modern arenas standing.

What Doesn't Change From Building to Building

For all the differences in age, size and price, the playing surface is identical everywhere: a 94-by-50-foot floor, a 10-foot rim, a 3-point arc 23 feet 9 inches from the basket at the top and 22 feet in the corners. What varies is everything around it — sightlines, seat pitch, how close the front row sits to the baseline, how loud the room gets. Those are what renovations buy, and they are why a 1968 building and a 2024 building can both be state of the art at once.

Two nearby reads: the men who filled these floors at the outer limit of the sport, in The 10 Tallest Players in NBA History, and the mechanism that decides which of these buildings gets the next generational prospect, in How Does the NBA Draft Lottery Work? Odds and Percentages.

When This Page Updates

Arena names change more often than arenas do. This list is refreshed whenever a naming-rights deal changes, a capacity is officially restated, or a new building opens — the next scheduled addition is Oklahoma City's Continental Coliseum, currently targeted for 2028.

FAQ

What is the oldest NBA arena? Madison Square Garden, which opened February 11, 1968. It is the only NBA arena that opened before 1990, and it is 22 years older than the second-oldest, Target Center in Minneapolis.

What is the newest NBA arena? Intuit Dome in Inglewood, California, home of the LA Clippers. It opened August 15, 2024, at a cost of about $2 billion, and hosted the 2026 NBA All-Star Game.

Which NBA arena holds the most fans? United Center in Chicago, at 20,917 for basketball. Capital One Arena (20,333), Little Caesars Arena (20,332) and Xfinity Mobile Arena (20,007) are the only other NBA buildings above 20,000.

Which NBA arena is the smallest? Smoothie King Center in New Orleans, at 16,867 for basketball. It has been reduced several times from an original 17,200.

How many NBA arenas are shared with NHL teams? Ten of the 30. The newest shared building is Delta Center in Salt Lake City, where the Utah Mammoth joined the Jazz after relocating from Arizona in 2024.

Do any two NBA teams share an arena? Not anymore. The Lakers and Clippers shared Crypto.com Arena from 1999 until the Clippers moved into Intuit Dome in 2024. All 30 NBA teams now have their own primary home.

Why do so many NBA arenas date from 1999? Seven of them do, which is the largest single-year cluster in the league. The late 1990s were the peak of a construction wave driven by the arrival of luxury suites and club seating as major revenue streams — the same economics that reshaped stadium building across American sports.

Is Madison Square Garden the same building the Knicks have always played in? No. The current Garden is the fourth building to carry the name and the second the Knicks have called home. They played in the third Garden on Eighth Avenue between 49th and 50th Streets from their founding in 1946 until 1968.