Ningbo Cixi Stadium

The ground at 188 Cangzhou Road does not belong to a club. It belongs to Cixi — a city inside Ningbo's own municipal boundary — and it is the bowl the sports centre was built around, which is why it answers to two names at once: Ningbo Cixi Stadium on some listings, Cixi Sports Center Stadium on others.

It was drawn up by the Shanghai House Architectural Design Institute and put up by Longyuan Construction Group, and it opened onto a plain natural-grass pitch ringed by a running track — a civic all-purpose ground rather than a football-first one. Between 2023 and 2025 the track and the playing surface were both relaid. What went down in the middle is described in places as synthetic turf, though the terminology does not settle the question of whether the pitch is now grass, artificial or a hybrid.

Day-to-day it is run by Ningbo Cixi Culture Tourism Group Co., Ltd., a state-owned operator. The stadium keeps no site of its own; notices, bookings and event listings go out through the parent company's portal at cxnyjt.com, which means the ground is administratively a line item in a wider leisure portfolio.

It is also, for now, the senior venue in this part of the municipality. Ningbo has begun work on the Olympic Sports Center Stadium, a 2.87 billion yuan project due in 2028 — but that is across the metropolitan area, and Cixi's own bowl was not touched by it.