Stade de Paris
Paris (Saint-Ouen), Île-de-France, France
Stade de Paris, Paris (Saint-Ouen), France — opened 24 October 1909, 3 rugby league games hosted, home of primarily the football club Red Star FC; a Paris rugby league club, Celtic de Paris, is documented as having used grounds in Saint-Ouen among others in this era, though its exact tenancy of this specific stadium is not fully corroborated.
Sourcing caveat: Only one of our three recorded rugby league matches here (the 1961 France v New Zealand test) could be individually confirmed by date; the other two are not found in sources checked. The exact tenant club and how central this ground was to it is not fully corroborated beyond a single source.
Ground facts
| Opened | 24 October 1909 (Inaugurated with a football friendly (Red Star v Old Westminsters); it is now known as Stade Bauer, in Saint-Ouen, a northern Paris suburb — not to be confused with the modern Stade de France (Saint-Denis, opened 1998), which is a completely separate, unrelated venue.) |
| Home club | primarily the football club Red Star FC; a Paris rugby league club, Celtic de Paris, is documented as having used grounds in Saint-Ouen among others in this era, though its exact tenancy of this specific stadium is not fully corroborated |
| Games hosted (rugby league, on record) | 3 |
| Top recorded crowd | 25,000 |
| Capacity | approximately 23,000 after a 1947 expansion — the capacity era spanning most of this venue's recorded rugby league window |
| Floodlights installed | installed in 1965, roughly midway through the venue's rugby league era — earlier matches would have been played in daylight |
| Surface | natural grass (replaced by synthetic turf in 2011, long after the rugby league period) |
| Years used | 1953–1969 |
| Location | Paris (Saint-Ouen), Île-de-France |
Name history
- Stade de Saint-Ouen — the original name at opening
- Stade de Paris — used from around 1922, the name during its rugby league era
- Stade Bauer — renamed shortly after the Second World War, honouring Dr. Jean-Claude Bauer, a Jewish communist Resistance fighter executed in 1942 — the ground's name since
Rugby league history
This historic Paris-area ground's rugby league significance appears to be chiefly as an early-to-mid 20th century venue for French national rugby league team fixtures during several European Rugby League Championship periods. A France v New Zealand test is documented there in 1961, one of our three recorded games. It is a genuinely historic ground, essentially a suburban Paris football stadium (mainly associated with Red Star FC) that hosted rugby league at intervals rather than being a purpose-built rugby league venue.
Primarily a football ground, long associated with Red Star FC.
Sources
Data last verified: 11 August 2026.
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