Image by CAF
FC Bayern and Ajax will play the opening match at Kenya’s new national stadium in Nairobi on 5 January 2027, giving the venue, which cost approximately $350m, a high-profile commercial launch six months before AFCON 2027. For Bayern, it is the club’s first visit to Kenya and its first move to add Africa to an international fan programme that has long focused on the US and Asia. Bayern is the world’s largest sports club by membership, with more than 432,500 members and 4,897 officially registered fan clubs worldwide, though the club did not say how many of them are in Africa.
The friendly will inaugurate the 60,000-capacity Raila Odinga International Stadium at Talanta Sports City, which President William Ruto announced on Wednesday. Ajax said both clubs were invited by the organisers, who see the meeting of six-time and four-time UEFA Champions League winners as a major football event for East Africa. The Dutch club said it was honoured by the invitation and will use the match as the final part of Míchel Sánchez’s side’s preparations for the second half of the season.
The match will be broadcast live in Germany on ProSieben and on FC Bayern TV PLUS, Bayern’s pay-per-view streaming service. Bayern said tickets go on sale on 5 November through talantasportscity.com.
Centrepiece of Kenya’s preparations
The stadium is the centrepiece of Kenya’s preparations to co-host the Africa Cup of Nations with Uganda and Tanzania next summer, the first edition held across three countries and the first in East Africa since Ethiopia hosted in 1976. Built by China Road and Bridge Corporation, it is the country’s largest sports infrastructure project in decades, with its cost reported at approximately KSh 45bn. Ruto approved renaming the venue after the late former prime minister Raila Odinga in December 2025.
“FC Bayern has millions of fantastic fans in Africa with whom we feel a close connection – it’s a continent with a huge passion for football,” said Rouven Kasper, FC Bayern board member for marketing & sales. “For many years, we have consistently maintained a presence in America and Asia with our ‘Audi Summer Tour’. Now we have a new opportunity to further strengthen our connection with our fans in Africa too, to allow people to experience FC Bayern first-hand and to underline our club’s international appeal. We will be making a further contribution to raising the profile of the Bundesliga and are very much looking forward to this special event.”
The stadium’s first commercial test
A sell-out match with two European clubs gives operators a live run at ticketing, hospitality, security and broadcast production well before CAF’s tournament scrutiny, and it puts the venue in front of sponsors and event promoters who will be weighing its use after AFCON. Kenya’s last purpose-built international stadium, Kasarani, opened in 1987, and a venue on this scale needs a regular calendar of concerts, rugby and international football to justify the investment once the tournament has gone.
The two clubs come to Nairobi with different aims. Bayern frames the trip around its fanbase and the Bundesliga’s profile, and a January friendly fits the winter break, so Africa gets a one-off fixture rather than a slot in the summer tour that carries the club’s sponsor activations in the US and Asia. Ticket sales, streaming subscriptions and engagement from the trip will show whether African markets could feature more regularly in its touring plans.
Ajax presents the match mainly as football preparation, but it is also a return to a continent where the club once had a commercial footprint. Ajax owned a majority stake in Ajax Cape Town for two decades before selling it in 2020. A high-profile fixture in Nairobi gives the Dutch club visibility in an East African market where Premier League clubs dominate fan attention, at little cost to its sporting calendar. No African broadcaster deal or Dutch partner has been named to air the match.
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