Prime Arena

Prime Arena is a proposed indoor sports and entertainment venue on an eight-acre site at Cherrywood in south Dublin, close to Junction 16 of the M50. Developed by Prime Arena Holdings and designed by the global sports architecture practice Populous, the building pairs two Olympic-sized ice rinks with a main arena bowl seating 8,000, expandable to roughly 10,500 for concerts and larger events. Ireland currently has no permanent Olympic-standard ice facility, and the venue is intended to fill that gap while also serving as a mid-sized indoor room for concerts, tennis and other indoor sport, a format the country has long lacked. Populous has framed the design around bringing ice hockey spectators close to the rink, wrapping the bowl in a warm, layered facade set behind a public plaza that gives the arena a civic presence within Cherrywood. Prime Arena Holdings has outlined plans for the venue to host a professional Dublin ice hockey franchise and projects more than 1.5 million visits a year across its full events programme.