Official Ranking for Iran's Football Stadiums

The Iran Football Federation announced the launch of a plan to evaluate and classify the country's stadiums into five levels.

According to "Varzeh Se", the club licensing management of the Football Federation announced the beginning of the assessment and leveling plan of the country's stadiums in announcement number three. In this plan, the facilities and condition of the stadiums are checked to be placed in one of the five levels A, B, C, D and E based on the guidelines and approved forms.

This division is in line with the new regulations of AFC stadiums. In the 2026 version of AFC regulations, level A is the highest level and level E is the lowest level, and certain minimum facilities and requirements are considered for each level. These regulations will be implemented from the 2026-2027 season in the Asian club competitions.

The coordination meeting of the evaluators of this plan was held on October 21, at the place of public relations of the League organization. Mohammad Reza Saket, the director of club licensing, along with Maeda Jafari and Bilali, experts of this management, attended the meeting. Ali Dehqan, Amir Hossein Roshanak, Mehrdad Shafiei and Asad Haj Mohammad have also been introduced as the selected evaluators of the stadiums in the 2026-2027 cycle.

The scope of investigations includes different parts of a stadium. General information, dimensions of the field and condition of the grass, lighting and scoreboard, technical equipment, dressing rooms, spectator stands, media infrastructure, safety and security facilities, medical and welfare services and urban facilities will all be considered in the evaluation.

To clarify the difference between these levels, in the spectator capacity section of the AFC regulations, the minimum capacity of level A is set at 20,000 people. This is at least 10,000 people for B level, 5,000 people for C level, 3,000 people for D level and 250 people for E level. Spectator capacity is one of the criteria and is checked along with other technical, service and safety requirements.

Interestingly, in this way, Hassan Khan Castle Stadium, which hosts Esteghlal and Persepolis games, will not be ranked at level one. But Yadgar Imam Stadium, Naqsh Jahan and Foulad Arena will be classified in level one.

According to the announcement of the federation, in addition to reviewing the documents, the evaluators will verify the existing situation by attending the stadiums. In the coordination meeting, possible challenges, the method of recording information and reviewing documents were discussed so that the criteria are implemented in the same way in different stadiums.

Managers and officials of the stadiums are also required to read the evaluation instructions and be present when the evaluators visit. Providing information and documentation and providing access to different parts of the stadium is one of the cooperations that have been requested for the implementation of this plan.

The purpose of this assessment is to create an integrated system for leveling stadiums, identifying infrastructure needs and improving hosting standards. A plan that is supposed to make the state of the country's stadiums facilities can be checked and compared based on specific criteria.