Skra: Running Inside an Old Warsaw Stadium

I go to Skra from time to time for organised running training with Warsaw running groups.

For many runners in Warsaw, this is a normal training place. You arrive, warm up, do the session, check the pace, and go home. The track works. People use it. During faster parts of the session, I mostly look at my watch.

But Skra isn’t an ordinary running track.

I’m using “Skra” here in the everyday Warsaw sense: the old stadium and sports complex at Wawelska, not only the club itself.

From the street, it can look like abandoned walls with graffiti. From the Pole Mokotowskie side, it looks different. Behind the rough outside there’s a working track, runners training, and an old stadium that’s still alive, just in a limited way.

The running surface was renovated a few years ago and has already been in use for a while. Around it, the older stadium is in much worse condition. The stands are overgrown. Some windows are broken. There’s graffiti, damaged concrete, old railings, and the tall glazed tower above the track.

On the old building, the letters SKRA are still visible.

Higher up in the stands, there’s also the old Polskie Radio i Telewizja section. This was the place where commentators watched events and reported from the stadium.

That small detail made me look at the stadium differently. It’s easy to see the broken glass and plants first. But the radio and television section points to something else: competitions, crowds, commentary, people working around the event, and the stadium doing the job it was built for.

I’d been here before, a couple of years earlier, also for running training. It felt strange then, and it still feels strange now, although I’ve got used to it a little. You run on a good track, but around you there’s an older stadium landscape that looks as if it belongs to another time.

So I wanted to understand what happened here.

Before Skra, There Was Warszawianka

The story of this place didn’t start with Skra.

Before the war, the site at Wawelska 5 was Warszawianka’s sports ground. The club received the land in 1930, opened a temporary football pitch there in 1932, and in 1934 finally had its own stadium in this part of Warsaw.

Before that, Warszawianka had played league matches elsewhere: at Agrykola, on the DOK pitch near today’s Legia training ground, and at Stadion Wojska Polskiego. Wawelska gave the club its own place.

One archive set from 1939 shows Warszawianka playing Ruch Wielkie Hajduki on its Warsaw pitch. There are players, match action, and spectators standing on the “green stand”. It’s worth keeping that image in mind when looking at Skra today, because before Skra arrived, this was already a Warsaw sports ground.

Warszawianka had bigger plans for the site. A large athletics stadium was started, but the war interrupted the project. After the war, Wawelska didn’t return to Warszawianka. In 1946 it was taken over by Skra.

The reasons weren’t simple.

Skra couldn’t return to its old ground near Okopowa and Gibalskiego. That place had been used during the occupation for executions and burials. A text from Skarpa Warszawska says that after the war 6,588 remains were exhumed and moved to the Warsaw Insurgents Cemetery, and that about 300 more victims were found there in 1988 and reburied on site. The old Skra ground didn’t come back as a sports ground.

Warszawianka, meanwhile, wasn’t in a strong position after the war. Its Wawelska project had been interrupted, the club’s post-war activity was disrupted, and later Warszawianka rebuilt itself elsewhere. Its sports complex at Puławska 101 opened in 1961, on the club’s fortieth anniversary.

So Wawelska passed into Skra’s story. Skra needed a new home. Wawelska was already a sports site, even if unfinished and damaged. Warszawianka was weakened. The authorities made the decision.

Skra’s worker-club identity probably didn’t hurt in the post-war system, but I haven’t found enough evidence to make it the main explanation.

When I run at Skra today, I’m running in a stadium whose story started before Skra arrived.

Speedway Before the Athletics Stadium

One of the older archive photo sets shows Skra in 1949.

It isn’t the athletics stadium I know from training. The later stadium form was still not completed. But sport was already happening here. In 1949, Skra hosted a motorcycle speedway competition between Poland and the Netherlands.

The post-war stadium was built between 1948 and 1953. It was built in a horseshoe shape, with stands for about 35,000 spectators.

That horseshoe shape is still the main thing you see today, even if many details have changed.

The Tartan Era

The 1973 athletics photos are the easiest ones to compare with what I see today.

They show the same place doing its job. Runners on the track. Spectators in the stands. Advertising boards. Athletes competing, not just training.

The old stadium shape is still recognisable today, which makes the comparison easier to imagine. The stands I see now, fenced and overgrown, were once part of a working athletics venue.

This is where Skra became more than just another Warsaw sports ground. In 1969, tartan was laid at the stadium. PZLA describes the late 1960s and 1970s as the beginning of the tartan era in Polish athletics, and says that Skra later hosted many events, including Polish Championships, the Janusz Kusociński Memorial, European Cup competitions, and the International Warsaw Championships.

The Polskie Radio i Telewizja section, the tower, the size of the stands – they belong to a stadium that once had crowds, athletes, officials and commentators working around the track.

The Tower, the Letters, the Old Media Section

The tower is the easiest part to notice.

It stands above the track and the old stands. Even now, damaged and covered in graffiti, it still looks like a stadium structure. It suggests timing, judging, watching, organising. It doesn’t look like a random tower. It belongs to sport.

The same is true of the Polskie Radio i Telewizja section.

Someone once sat there and watched events from above the track. The words are still there, even though the windows and the structure around them are in poor condition.

The SKRA lettering works in a similar way.

It gives the building a name. Without it, this could be almost any damaged sports structure. With it, the place still identifies itself.

Skra Was Bigger Than the Track

From the point of view of a runner, it’s easy to reduce Skra to the track. But the old complex was much larger.

The aerial photos from 1983-1985 show the stadium and swimming pools of RKS Skra at Wawelska 5 from above.

Skra’s history lists many facilities around the site: courts, training pitches, a speedway track, a training stadium, a pool complex, and support spaces such as a hotel, canteen, medical room, sauna and gym. It also notes that the Museum of Physical Culture and Tourism operated at Skra before later moving to the Olympic Centre.

For decades, Skra wasn’t only a place for training and competitions. It was also a wider Warsaw sports address.

Then the decline came.

After the political and economic changes of the 1990s, the complex became harder to maintain. Sources point to debts, lack of repairs, disputes over the land, and failed development plans. The stadium was inactive from 2019 because of its poor technical condition.

This is where the history stops being abstract. It’s visible in the fenced stands, broken windows and plants growing through the concrete.

Still Used, Still Closed

The old stadium isn’t simply abandoned.

The track is used. I run there. Other people run there. Warsaw running groups train there. The current use is visible on site: Aktywna Warszawa boards, running rules and lane distances.

At the same time, the old stadium isn’t fully open. The stands and upper parts are fenced off. You can train on the track, but you can’t just walk into the old stadium structures.

There’s also a newer, smaller athletics stadium next to the old one within the Nowa Skra complex. The first stage of modernisation included a training stadium, rugby pitch, throwing zone and recreation area. Current city materials describe the complex as used by athletics clubs, universities, running groups and residents.

So today there are two things next to each other: the old main stadium, where I run, and the newer training stadium nearby. Around them are public paths, fenced ruins, and now a construction site.

The Next Layer Is Already Being Built

Skra is changing again.

Near the stadium, construction of the new sports hall is already visible.

The hall is planned as a sports and entertainment venue for around 6,000 spectators, adapted mainly for basketball and volleyball. Reports from 2026 say it’s intended to become a new home for Legia’s basketball team, with completion planned for autumn 2028.

That makes the current moment at Skra worth photographing. The old stadium is still here, but another version of the place is already being built next to it.

I don’t know how much of this version of Skra will remain after the next stages.

The stadium is still alive, just not in the way it used to be.