Port Sudan International Stadium

The ground sits in a city that shed its old name long ago, but the pitch itself has kept its own. It is a natural grass football field, surrounded by a standard athletics track, though the track is not much used. The capacity is roughly twenty thousand, a figure that has not been matched since the matches of the 2011 African Nations Championship.

The two clubs that call it home, Hay Al-Arab and Hilal Alsahil, are local rivals who have been playing since the 1930s. They are not a major force in the Sudan Premier League, but they keep the fixture alive. The stadium has not always been used for sport. In March 2024, it hosted a graduation ceremony for mobilized forces, a military event that drew the attention of the country’s armed forces commander. Before that, in 2018, it was the venue for a sea tourism festival, complete with traditional dances from an Indonesian peacekeeping contingent. The stadium is a civic space as much as a sports venue.

The surface is maintained. There is no record of who built it or when, only that it was constructed in the late 20th century. Some sources say the year is unknown, but the building is still there.