Nakhchivan City Stadium

The pitch on Nizami Street has had two names and two openings. Before 2013 it carried the name of Ibrahimkhalil Akhundlu; the rebuild that finished that August handed it the name it holds now, the Stadium of the Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic. Most locals skip both and call it the Nakhchivan City Stadium.

Nakhchivan sits apart from the rest of Azerbaijan, and the ground has never hosted a national side or a European final. It got its full house on 5 May 2017, when the Azerbaijan Cup final brought Qarabag and Gabala here — 12,800 in, not a seat spare, the record still standing.

The rest of the year it is a club ground. Araz-Nakhchivan play their home fixtures on the natural grass here, though the fixture list occasionally moves them to Baku, to the Liv Bona Dea Arena or the Dalga Arena.

Ownership changed hands more recently than the name did. In 2023 the Cabinet of Ministers of the Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic transferred the stadium to the Nakhchivan Football Federation, which now runs the 17,700 square metres of grounds behind the Nizami Street gate.