Pankritio Stadium

Ask about the Pankritio and the first thing anyone in Heraklion mentions is the Olympics, not the football. When Athens took the Games to Crete in 2004, ten matches came with it — group games in both the men's and women's tournaments.

Domestically, Ergotelis moved in from the start because their own ground was unfit for use, and stayed for close to two decades. OFI Crete used it the same way between 2005 and 2009 while their stadium was rebuilt, then came back for good from the 2025/26 season after safety concerns closed their own arena — so the Pankritio now effectively houses both of the city's clubs at once, something that would be unusual almost anywhere else in Greece.

The 2005–06 Greek Cup final gave Heraklion its first taste of that fixture since 1931, which says something about how long the city had gone without hosting a match of that weight. Athletics has its own place here too, with the Iraklio meeting a fixture on the IAAF World Challenge circuit since the stadium opened, and the continental first-league team championships held on the track in 2015.

Away from sport, Deep Purple and Vasilis Papakonstantinou shared the stage here in May 2011 — not something the stadium's football tenants get mentioned in the same sentence as, but part of its record all the same.