Estadio El Encanto

About Estadio El Encanto

In 2020, a Liga MX club that had not existed a few months earlier needed a home. Mazatlán FC was born that spring, when the Monarcas Morelia franchise was uprooted from Michoacán and dropped on the Pacific coast, and the state of Sinaloa handed it a brand-new stadium in the Pradera Dorada neighborhood on the eastern edge of the city. The building was finished before the club had a history. Six years later it has outlived that club entirely.

The architecture is the reason people remember it. DUNN Arquitectura Ligera shaped the roof lines to echo ocean waves, and the translucent PVDF membrane facade, roughly 16,000 square meters of it, gives the whole structure a luminous, almost living quality after dark. Fans nicknamed it El Kraken within weeks of opening, after the mythological sea creature. The formal name changed to Estadio El Encanto in October 2023 under a sponsorship deal with a local homebuilder, though the older nickname stuck harder than the sponsor’s.

Two tiers wrap the north, east, and west stands while the south end stays open, framing the entrance and giving arriving fans a reveal as the bowl comes into view. The lower ring holds about 14,636 seats, the upper tier another 9,204, and there are 1,160 box seats above them. Twenty-five thousand in total. For a certified professional match, only 20,195 of those are counted, a trim of roughly nineteen percent for safety and sightlines. Mazatlán’s climate keeps the natural grass healthy year-round, and the partial membrane roof does the real work here, shielding most seats from sun and rain without sealing the space off from the ocean air.

That climate shapes every match day. Summer fixtures from June through September bring heat and humidity, with temperatures routinely hitting 32-35°C (90-95°F) and heavy afternoon rain that usually clears before an evening kickoff. The open south end lets sea breezes move through the bowl. The covered sections keep the worst of the sun off. It is a stadium built for the tropics, not against them.

Who actually plays here has become the interesting part. Mazatlán FC was sold in December 2025 and left after the Clausura 2026 season, relocating to Mexico City to bring back the old Atlante name. For a stretch El Encanto sat quiet, used mostly for concerts. Then a new tenant arrived. Dorados de Sinaloa, of the second-division Liga de Expansión MX, moved their home matches here for the Apertura 2026 tournament while their own stadium in Culiacán is renovated. Professional football returned to the port on July 25, 2026, against Cancún FC.

Getting to Estadio El Encanto

Public Transit

Mazatlán has no rail or metro system. City buses and the iconic pulmonías are your options.

Eco-taxis (regular sedan taxis) are also available throughout the city at around MXN $100 per ride.

Driving + Parking

GPS address: Av. Munich s/n, Fraccionamiento Pradera Dorada, Mazatlán, Sinaloa 82139.

On-site parking holds 2,000+ vehicles but fills fast on event days. Informal overflow lots operate on surrounding streets along Av. Munich and in the Pradera Dorada neighborhood. After matches, streets near the stadium switch to one-way traffic, so allow extra time for your exit.

Rideshare

Uber and DiDi both operate in Mazatlán. From the Golden Zone or Malecón, a ride to the stadium costs MXN $80-120 (USD $4-6), about 20-25 minutes. After matches, walk about 800 meters west on Av. Munich to find a rideshare pickup point, since streets immediately around the stadium are closed to traffic post-match.

From the Airport

Construction & Design

The timeline was tight and political. Ground was broken in 2017 as a state project championed by Sinaloa’s government, long before anyone knew a Liga MX club would land in Mazatlán. When the Monarcas Morelia relocation was confirmed in 2020, the venue suddenly had a top-flight tenant and a hard deadline, and it opened that July with the paint barely dry. Construction ran from 2017 through 2020.

DUNN Arquitectura Ligera led the design, the same firm responsible for the lightweight membrane roofs at Chivas’ Estadio Akron and Puebla’s Estadio Cuauhtémoc. Meprosa Construcciones handled the build. The signature move is that PVDF membrane, roughly 16,000 square meters wrapping the facade and forming a partial sunroof, a material that reads as solid white by day and glows once the interior lights come up. Reinforced concrete carries the upper tiers and the foundations. The rest is deliberately light.

The money is where the story gets murkier. The original 2017 budget sat near MXN 460 million, a figure that appears across contemporary Mexican reporting. The final cost is generally recorded at roughly MXN 652 million, the number carried in the stadium’s reference records. That gap, close to 200 million pesos, drew scrutiny in the local press over how the public project was funded and who benefited. What is not disputed is who pays for it and owns it: the Government of the State of Sinaloa built the stadium and holds title to it, and it operated for years under a long-term comodato, a concession arrangement, granted to the resident club rather than an outright sale.

That ownership structure is exactly why the building survived losing its team. A privately owned stadium tied to a departing franchise can go dark for good. This one belongs to the state, so when Mazatlán FC left, the venue simply waited for the next occupant. Not a bad outcome for a stadium that was built for a club that did not exist when the first concrete was poured.

History of Estadio El Encanto

The stadium’s whole existence traces back to one of the most contested franchise moves in Liga MX history. In 2020, the Monarcas Morelia, a club with decades of history in Michoacán, were relocated to the Pacific coast by Grupo Salinas, Ricardo Salinas Pliego’s group. The move devastated Morelia’s supporters. It handed Mazatlán its first top-flight football club, and a stadium to house it.

The opening match came on July 27, 2020: Mazatlán FC against Puebla, a 1-4 loss played behind closed doors because of the pandemic. Santiago Ormeño scored the club’s first goal in the building. Fans could not attend until October 16, 2020, when 6,000 spectators finally filled part of the bowl for a match against Juárez. The stadium’s biggest Liga MX crowd came on August 26, 2022, when 18,365 turned up for Club América.

Key moments in the stadium’s history:

• July 27, 2020: First-ever match, Mazatlán FC 1-4 Puebla, behind closed doors. Santiago Ormeño scores the first home goal.
• October 16, 2020: First match with spectators, about 6,000 fans for Mazatlán FC vs. FC Juárez.
• August 26, 2022: Record Liga MX attendance, 18,365 for Mazatlán FC vs. Club América.
• June 7, 2023: First international match, Mexico 2-0 Guatemala before 20,068 fans, with goals from Raúl Jiménez and Roberto de la Rosa.
• October 25, 2023: Renamed from Estadio de Mazatlán to Estadio El Encanto under a sponsorship deal with homebuilder Encanto Desarrollos.

The Mexico national team’s visit in June 2023 was the high-water mark, a near-capacity house watching El Tri win 2-0. Beyond football, El Encanto has hosted concerts and large events, which kept the lights on during the quiet stretch after Mazatlán FC’s departure.

That departure is the pivot the whole story now turns on. The club was sold in December 2025, passing from Salinas Pliego to businessman Emilio Escalante, and the Clausura 2026 tournament was its last in Mazatlán. The franchise moved to Mexico City to revive Atlante, one of Mexican football’s oldest names. For a few months the newest stadium in the country had no team at all.

Then Dorados de Sinaloa arrived. The second-division side, which had been playing home matches in Tijuana after leaving Culiacán over security concerns in 2024, agreed to base itself at El Encanto starting with the Apertura 2026 season. Early reports framed it as a temporary stay tied to work on their Culiacán stadium, though whether the move to Mazatlán proves temporary or permanent is still unsettled. Whether the El Kraken nickname or the El Encanto sponsorship endures, the building itself has already proven the more durable idea: a modern venue on the Pacific that keeps finding reasons to stay lit, even when the team on the shirt keeps changing.

Sources & Further Reading

• Stadium overview and history: en.wikipedia.org. Naming history, opening date, tenants, and notable matches.
• Capacity, seating breakdown, and events: es.wikipedia.org. Detailed seating figures, attendance records, and ownership.
• Architect, contractor, and materials: blog.laminasyaceros.com. Construction details, DUNN Arquitectura Ligera, and the PVDF membrane.
• Dorados de Sinaloa relocation to Mazatlán: punto.mx. The temporary Apertura 2026 move and July 25 debut against Cancún FC.
• Mazatlán FC sale and the stadium’s future: mediotiempo.com. The December 2025 sale, the move to Atlante, and the state’s ownership via comodato.