Aviva Stadium Is Now Providing Free Period Products For All Visitors

We’ve all been there. You’re at a concert or a match, you feel that familiar twinge, and you spend the next twenty minutes doing an increasingly frantic bathroom-to-bathroom lap of a massive public venue, only to find empty dispensers or nothing at all. It’s stressful, it’s embarrassing, and honestly, in 2026, it shouldn’t still be happening.

New research from Aviva Ireland has put some real numbers on what so many of us have experienced firsthand. A survey of 500 people who menstruate found that 82% have struggled to find period products at a public venue when they needed them. More striking still, 62% have left a sports event, concert or social activity early because they couldn’t access what they needed. That’s not a minor inconvenience. That’s people being effectively pushed out of public life by something entirely preventable.

Aviva Stadium is making a change

In response to those findings, Aviva Ireland has announced a partnership with Riley, the Irish female-founded period care company, to provide free period products across Aviva Stadium. Period care stations will be installed in female and accessible bathrooms as well as in player and referee changing rooms. With over one million people passing through the stadium at events in 2025, the reach of this initiative is genuinely significant — covering almost 100 bathrooms and key sporting facilities throughout the venue.

The timing of the announcement is also worth noting. Aviva Stadium will host the Ireland v Scotland Women’s Six Nations match on Sunday, 17 May — the first standalone Women’s Six Nations fixture to be staged there. It’s expected to be the highest attended women’s international rugby match ever held at the venue, and the partnership feels like a fitting statement ahead of that milestone.

Caroline Cummins, Sponsorship Manager at Aviva Ireland, put it plainly: “Anyone who has ever been caught out at an event knows how stressful it can be to realise there’s no access to period products when you need them. Too often, this means people can’t enjoy sport, concerts or live events, or feel forced to leave early. By partnering with Riley, we’re helping to normalise period care in public spaces and ensure that inclusion is visible, practical and long lasting.”

The numbers behind the initiative

The research paints a picture that will feel familiar. 85% of respondents agreed that period stigma affects confidence to take part in sport. Think about that in the context of trying to encourage our daughters, nieces or the girls on the school team to get involved and stay involved. If the environments around sport don’t feel like they were built with them in mind, that message lands loud and clear.

82% said they had skipped, reduced or changed their involvement in exercise because they felt unprepared for their period. And despite growing national conversation around period care access, only 38% of respondents believe public venues currently do enough to meet the needs of people who menstruate. The gap between what people need and what venues provide is still wide.

Fiona Parfrey, Co-Founder of Riley, said: “Access to period products shouldn’t depend on where you are or what you’re doing. By bringing free, sustainable period products to Aviva Stadium, we’re helping make thoughtful, inclusive public venues the standard — not the exception.”

Sustainability matters too

Riley’s products are made with 100% organic cotton, are plastic free, and are designed with a genuine focus on minimising environmental impact. For anyone who’s been trying to make more considered choices about the products they use, it’s good to know that the free provision at the stadium won’t be coming at a cost to the planet either.

It’s a small but meaningful shift. Public venues taking practical responsibility for period care — rather than leaving it to individuals to plan, panic and improvise — is exactly the kind of standard that should be standard practice everywhere. Aviva Stadium is setting a benchmark. Hopefully others will follow.

For more information, visit aviva.ie/riley.