Bordeaux

Bordeaux is the capital of the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region and prefecture of the Gironde department, a port city on the Garonne near the Atlantic coast, which ships reach by sailing up the Gironde estuary. Founded by the Bituriges Vivisci, who named it Burdigala, it passed into Roman hands around 60 BC and, after the marriage of Eleanor of Aquitaine to Henry II, came under English rule until its annexation to France following the Battle of Castillon in 1453. With more than 260,000 inhabitants and a metropolitan area of more than 1.4 million, its urban ensemble 'Bordeaux, Port of the Moon' has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2007, and its name is inseparable from wine: the region has some 116,000 hectares of vineyards and 57 appellations, and the Cité du Vin opened its doors in 2016.

Sport in Bordeaux has two great standard-bearers: Girondins de Bordeaux, six times French football champions, and Union Bordeaux Bègles, a Top 14 rugby club that plays at the Stade Chaban-Delmas and won the European Champions Cup in 2025 and 2026. The city hosted matches of the 1938 and 1998 football World Cups and of the 2007 Rugby World Cup, and in 2015 it opened the Stade de Bordeaux, with more than 42,000 seats, which staged five matches of Euro 2016, games of the 2023 Rugby World Cup and the football tournament of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games.

Bordeaux was recognised by ACES Europe as European City of Sport 2015, the same year it opened its new stadium, and in the years that followed it consolidated its profile as a host of major competitions with Euro 2016, the 2023 Rugby World Cup and the 2024 Games. The title places it within the French representation of the ACES network, in which Nouvelle-Aquitaine counts other recognised cities such as Biarritz (2009), Pau (2018), Agen and Limoges (2025).