CSA Stadium of the Ministry of Defense of the Republic of Tajikistan

The ground in Dushanbe's Sino district is known to locals by two names, and the second one — the Polytechnic Stadium — has outlived the reason for it. Laid down in 1960 and finished the following year, it has kept its official name ever since, while the ministry above it changed countries: the Soviet defence ministry until 1991, the defence ministry of the Republic of Tajikistan after.

That continuity of name over a discontinuity of state is the unusual thing here. Nothing was rebranded, nothing was renamed for a sponsor. The paperwork moved; the sign did not.

For a military ground it stayed largely a training venue for a long stretch. In the Soviet years the ЦСКА-Памир youth side worked here. Competitive football arrived later — the senior club began playing its matches at the stadium from the middle of the 2000s, which is also roughly when the ground was reconstructed, though what that work covered is not recorded in any detail.

The pitch is natural grass and the stands hold 7,000.

In 2024 a plan was drawn up that would end the building rather than repair it — full reconstruction, the old structure demolished, a new complex in its place. The 1961 stands, by that plan, would be the part of the stadium that does not carry over, leaving the name to do what it has done since the start.