The University of South Carolina has started the first phase of renovations at Williams-Brice Stadium following the end of the 2025 football season.
These renovations will include adding additional premium areas, student section upgrades, renovations to locker rooms, improvements to restrooms, concessions and back-of-house additions. This will further enhance services to fans, according to a press release from GamecocksOnline.com.
Changes inside Williams-Brice Stadium
In July 2024, USC partnered with Elevate, a market research company, to conduct a widely distributed market survey and resulting analysis. After generating over 5,800 responses, about 94% of the respondents believe that upgrades to Williams-Brice are important.
The analysis also showed that Williams-Brice ranks last among SEC peers in premium percentage and suite count.
The Athletics Department has partnered with Populous, a global architectural design firm, for the design of the project. Kevin Plath, an architect for the company and lead project designer for the Williams-Brice renovations, said an overall stadium analysis was completed before the start of the renovations.
“We started from the ground up and looked at the whole stadium and thinking about every fan,” Plath said.
Current renderings of the proposed renovations include about 33 traditional suites and about 10 founders suites, giving fans a variety of offerings to choose from for their game-day experience, Plath said.
Chris Rogers, the executive associate athletics director for administration, said concessions and restrooms in the east ground will look completely different than they do now. The west ground's concessions and restrooms will be built back up, and new vertical entries via stairs from the ground level up to the concourse will be added, according to Rogers.
“The southwest ramp, which is the corner where the team walks in by Gamecock Walk, that ramp no longer exists,” Rogers said. “That will be built back in phases over this first phase.”
Plath said current concourses have a lot of cross traffic, between people waiting in line for concessions and restrooms or just trying to walk through.
The renovated concourse will have double the width, helping free up the circulation wait for restrooms that are close to the current concessions. The east and west concourses will have similar renovations, helping to improve the in-and-out movement of fans, he said.
“It’s all going to flow a lot better, and you’re not going to be queuing into each other and clashing and getting kind of tangled up,” Plath said.
The concessions will also become more modernized markets, where an individual can walk in and grab what they need. This will help move people more efficiently and minimize long lines, he added.
“We’re bringing all of that up to more of a modern standard and requirement by code, so fans on the east ground, west main and students in particular are all going to have significantly better amenities,” Plath said.
Student section upgrades
The student sections will also see upgrades during these renovations. The top of the student section bowl will be upgraded to include a new concourse, restrooms, concessions and a shaded area.
“There’s just going to be an immense more amount of square footage for students to move around,” Plath said.
The Floyd building, which stood at the north end zone, has been taken down, and will become an air-conditioned club space for students, giving students more square footage and area, according to Plath. However, this won’t be completed until after the 2026 season.
“That is something that is not done elsewhere. It’s going to be unique to South Carolina,” Plath said. “It’ll be a space that could be utilized for multi-purpose beyond football games.”
Though construction will be ongoing during the 2026 football season, Plath said the student section will still be usable for the upcoming season.
While there will still be a few ongoing projects throughout the 2026 season, the way the project was designed, the construction phases should be between the last football game of the 2025 season and before the first game of the 2026 season, Rogers said.
“As long as we execute everything to what the plan is, there should not be any disruptions,” Rogers said. “It’s not going to take away anybody’s ... experience.”
Rogers said the ultimate goal is to enhance the Williams-Brice game-day experience.
“The goal of all of those things is making the game-day experience great so people want to continue to come back,” he said.
All three phases of renovations to Williams-Brice are expected to be fully completed by the start of the 2028 football season.