Ultras Stuttgart

Red and white, drums and smoke – the Kurve never lets the silence win.

via Wikipedia: VfB Stuttgart · see source

Ultras Stuttgart is the principal ultras supporters' group associated with VfB Stuttgart, operating from the Kurve (the curved end) of the club's home ground in Stuttgart, Baden-Württemberg. As with most German ultras collectives, the group is defined by its commitment to vocal, choreographed, and visual support: coordinated tifos, large-scale banners, drumming, and sustained singing throughout every match. They see themselves as the living, breathing heart of the club's identity, separate from and often in tension with the commercial apparatus of modern professional football, yet inseparable from the red-and-white culture that has defined VfB Stuttgart since the club's re-establishment in 1945.

Their role extends beyond matchdays. Ultras Stuttgart organises away travel, produces matchday media, and maintains a continuous presence in the Kurve that anchors the broader supporter community. In the broader German football landscape, they occupy the same tradition as the ultras sections at other historic clubs: a self-organised, horizontally structured collective that treats the stadium as a civic space and the team as a shared inheritance rather than a product.

Quick Facts

Affiliation

VfB Stuttgart

Home ground

MHPArena, Stuttgart (formerly Mercedes-Benz Arena, Gottlieb-Daimler-Stadion, Neckarstadion)

Section

Kurve (curved end)

Role

Ultras supporters' group – choreography
tifos
vocal support
away travel

Club colours

Red and white

Club founded

1893 (re-established 1945)

Lore & Background

That origin – a club literally resurrected by its supporters – became a foundational myth for the ultras identity: the team belongs to the people who kept it alive, and the Kurve is where that claim is made audible every single Saturday. Through the 1970s and 1980s, as the Neckarstadion (later renamed Gottlieb-Daimler-Stadion, then Mercedes-Benz Arena, and now the MHPArena) hosted increasingly commercialised Bundesliga football, the ultras section consolidated its distinct character.

The group developed the large-scale choreography and tifo tradition that is now a hallmark of German ultras culture, producing elaborate multi-panel banners, coordinated flag displays, and pyrotechnic shows for major matches and European fixtures. The red-and-white palette of the banners and flags is a deliberate extension of the club's colours into the stadium's visual language. The group's relationship with the club's board and with broader German football governance has, like that of most ultras collectives, been marked by a mix of mutual dependence and friction.

The ultras provide the atmosphere that makes the stadium a destination; in return they demand a voice in matters of ticket pricing, stadium design, and the commercial direction of the club. This tension is not a bug but a feature: it is the mechanism through which the Kurve asserts that VfB Stuttgart is, first and foremost, a supporters' club.

Reader's Guide

The Kurve at the MHPArena is not a seat you buy; it is a space you occupy. Arrive early – well before kickoff – and you will find the section already alive: drums being tuned, banners being pinned, the low murmur of a crowd that has been talking football since the previous weekend. The choreography is the centrepiece. For big matches, the group produces multi-panel tifos that transform the entire curved end into a single image, often depicting the club's history, a political statement, or a message to the board.

The production is a weeks-long labour carried out in workshops and garages around the city, and the reveal at the 15th minute (or at half-time) is treated as a small civic event. Singing is continuous. There is no lull, no moment where the section goes quiet. Chants shift from the club anthem to player-specific songs to political verses, and the rhythm is carried by a drum line that has been in the Kurve for decades.

The red-and-white flags – some of them hand-stitched, some bearing the 1945 founding date – are waved in unison, creating a sea of colour that is visible from the opposite stand. What it means: to be in the Kurve is to be part of a claim. The club was re-founded by its people in 1945. The 1992 double was sealed in a stadium where the supporters' end never stopped singing.

The Kurve is where those stories are kept alive, not in a museum, but in the body, the voice, and the hands of the people who are still there, still red, still white, still refusing to let the silence win.