CSKA Stadium (Dushanbe)

The ground belongs to the army. Built by the Soviet Army's sports society at the start of the 1960s, it passed to the Ministry of Defence of the Republic of Tajikistan and still carries that connection in the name it used to go by — the CSKA Stadium of the Ministry of Defense of the Republic of Tajikistan. It sits in the Sino District of Dushanbe, part of a wider sports complex rather than standing alone.

For most of its life it was not the home of the club that now plays there. CSKA Dushanbe spent the Soviet years and the first period of independence at the Central Republican Stadium. Only after the merger that produced CSKA-Pamir, in the second half of the 2000s, did the club move its league and cup matches here. The stadium had been reconstructed during that same decade.

The natural grass takes Higher League and Tajikistan Cup fixtures, and in 2023 the ground hosted the CAFA U-20 Championship, with Iran and Turkmenistan among the sides that played on it. Between those occasions it does other work: athletics, concerts, city festivals.

Crowds are the quiet part of the story. A 2016 cup tie against Khayr Vahdat drew around three hundred; a match in 2023 was watched by eighty-two. The stands hold seven thousand, which means that on an ordinary league afternoon almost all of them are empty.