Borussia Dortmund has begun accepting NFC tickets held in Apple Wallet at the turnstiles of SIGNAL IDUNA PARK, its home ground in Dortmund, with supporters holding an iPhone or an Apple Watch to the reader instead of presenting a QR code on screen. The Bundesliga club, founded in 1909, announced the change on 26 August 2026 and put it into service in the public areas of the stadium for its first home league match of the 2026/27 season, against Hamburger SV on 29 August 2026.
Mobile tickets were already accepted at the ground before the change. What is new is the method of presentation. Instead of a barcode image that a scanner has to read optically, the ticket is an NFC pass that the device transmits over a short-range radio link when it is brought close to the reader.
“SIGNAL IDUNA PARK is Germany’s largest stadium, and with NFC ticketing it now offers an access option that lives up to that status,” said Alexander Mühl, Director of Marketing and Digitalisation at Borussia Dortmund. “Getting into the stadium faster and more comfortably is a real step forward for our fans.” The club describes the ground as the largest football stadium in Germany.
What fans need and how to load the ticket
The club states that the function requires an iPhone of at least the sixth generation running iOS 11 or newer. Eligible supporters can add a contactless ticket to Apple Wallet directly from the club’s online ticket shop.
The route through the shop runs as follows: sign in with your personal credentials, open “My Account” and find the digital tickets under “Orders” or under “My digital tickets”, open “Order details” for the relevant order, choose “Save or forward tickets”, then “Save” to store the digital ticket on the device, and finally “Add to Apple Wallet”, confirming with “Add”. Both digital day tickets and the digital season ticket can be stored as NFC tickets.
Tickets can also be passed on. Using “Share”, a supporter nominates who should receive the ticket and by which route. The recipient is sent a link and can download the ticket from that page without logging in to an account of their own.
At the turnstile
Before entering the stadium, the fan taps the ticket notification to call the ticket up, or unlocks the iPhone and opens the ticket in Apple Wallet, then holds the handset to the contactless logo on the turnstile. On Apple Watch the sequence is a double press of the side button followed by holding the display to the same contactless logo.
Why an NFC pass reads faster than a QR code
NFC is a short-range contactless technology operating at 13.56 MHz, the same air interface used by contactless bank cards. A pass in Apple Wallet is not simply an image on the screen. The credential is held in the device’s secure element and presented over the radio link when the phone or watch is brought within a few centimetres of the reader. That is the technical reason it does not need to be lined up under an optical scanner, held at the right angle or shown at sufficient screen brightness, and it is the general mechanism behind Wallet passes rather than something specific to this stadium. Readers new to the terminology will find NFC and the secure element explained in the RFID glossary.
QR codes are not going away
The club is explicit that the QR ticket continues. Fans using an Android smartphone or an older iPhone receive the same mobile ticket with a QR code as before and hold it under the scanner at the turnstile in the usual way. Borussia Dortmund has not announced any equivalent for Android wallets. Separately, Apple Pay is accepted in the BVB Fanwelt store and at the kiosks inside SIGNAL IDUNA PARK.
No ticketing system supplier or reader manufacturer has been named in connection with the deployment. Further coverage of contactless entry and stadium ticketing sits in the sports, NFC and access control sections.
