Stade de Colombes & Stade de France

Jacques Chirac, as prime minister, launched the project in 1988; in 1991 Michel Rocard settled on the new town of Melun-Sénart, and Chirac, by then mayor of Paris, objected that a site 35 km out was too far and refused city money for it. When FIFA awarded France the 1998 World Cup on 2 July 1992, the country undertook to build an all-seater covered stadium for 80,000; the state had not built a stadium since Colombes for the 1924 Olympics.

Édouard Balladur's government dropped Melun-Sénart for the Plaine Saint-Denis, on former Gaz de France coking land; the communist mayor Patrick Braouezec accepted it on condition that it accelerated the quarter's redevelopment. Nineteen consortiums entered the architecture competition launched at the end of 1993. The jury preferred Jean Nouvel's design by ten votes to four, but the government took the Macary–Zublena–Regembal–Costantini scheme carried by SGE–Bouygues–Dumez, officially on cost; on Nouvel's challenge, the Cour des comptes and the European Commission judged in July 1996 that the tender and the 30-year concession had been too favourable to the consortium.

Thirty-one months remained when the building permit was signed on 30 April 1995. Work began on 2 May and the first stone was laid on 6 September; 800,000 m² of earthworks were shifted in five months and 180,000 m³ of concrete poured within a year. The elliptical roof, six hectares and 13,000 tonnes, cost over €45 million. No under-soil heating went in, the ground standing on an old gasworks.

Known through the works as the Grand Stade, it was named through a competition run by the sports minister Guy Drut. The name most often put forward was Michel Platini's own, which he refused in his lifetime; he is also credited with proposing the name that was taken. On 4 December 1995 Drut announced that it would simply be called Stade de France. It was handed over on 30 November 1997, eleven days after a match between the site's own builders and the Variétés Club de France.

Chirac, by then President, opened the stadium on 28 January 1998 with a friendly against Spain; Zinédine Zidane scored the only goal, and the first at the ground, in the 20th minute. The rugby team followed on 2 February, beating England 24–17 in front of 77,567, with Philippe Bernat-Salles converting the first try in the 11th minute. On 12 July 1998 France beat Brazil 3–0 in the World Cup final there to take the title for the first time.

Real Madrid beat Valencia 3–0 in the 2000 Champions League final and Barcelona beat Arsenal 2–1 in 2006; the World Championships in Athletics were held there in 2003.

On 13 November 2015, during a France–Germany friendly attended by President François Hollande, the stadium was one target of the coordinated attacks across Paris. An attacker tried to get inside, was scared off by security and detonated outside the perimeter. French reports count three explosions around the ground and one person killed besides the attackers; others describe two blasts outside. The authorities let the match run to its end out of concern that stopping it would cause a panic. The Euro 2016 final was played there in July 2016, France losing 1–0 to Portugal in extra time. The 2022 Champions League final, moved from Russia after the invasion of Ukraine, was delayed by difficulties admitting supporters; UEFA's independent review found the early explanation that late-arriving fans were at fault “objectively untrue”.

No club has ever moved in. Paris Saint-Germain declined at the outset, staying at the Parc des Princes, and between 1998 and 2012 the state paid the concessionaire €17 million a year in penalties for the absence of a resident tenant. Stade Français took it up as a semi-regular home from 15 October 2005, when 79,454 watched them play Toulouse, a French league-fixture record in any sport that the club broke three more times by January 2007. The French Rugby Federation announced in November 2010 that it would not renew its deal beyond 2013 and would build a ground of its own; the site chosen in June 2012 was at Évry, and the project was abandoned in December 2016.

In 2024 the stadium held the Olympic athletics and rugby sevens events and the closing ceremonies of the Olympic and Paralympic Games; the renovation for those Games was put at €450 million by the public accounts minister Gérald Darmanin in October 2018. The ground is owned by the French State, rated category 4 by UEFA, and has been operated by GL Events since August 2025.