Hundreds of Austrians stripped naked today for photographer Spencer Tunick at the stadium that will host the Euro 2008 soccer final.

Mr Tunick, who regularly stages such mass nude events, arranged his subjects in the coloured seats of the venue, having been told by organisers the grass was too precious.

The stadium stages seven matches of the Euro 2008 soccer championship, being jointly hosted by Switzerland and Austria next month, including the final on June 29.

Sponsors of Tunick's event include a body promoting the soccer festival and Austrian railways, which gave participants free tickets.

Those taking part are volunteers who get a limited edition copy of the photo.

"This very special ephemeral installation that we are inviting you to be part of is devised to capture and combine the spirit of sports, the grand sweeping waves of stadium architecture and the abstract relation of the human form to modern structures," Mr Tunick said on his website.

One of Mr Tunick's latest stunts was on a Swiss glacier, where 600 people stripped off in temperatures of about 10 Celsius last August.

His biggest was last year in Mexico City with 18,000 people.

The next after Vienna are planned for Cork, Ireland, on June 17 and Dublin on June 21.

Mr Tunick told a news conference in Vienna last week that rules in the United States made it hard to organise his photo shoots there. "My work is a little edgy. It is tough for me to get permission to do things in the US," he said.