The Khan-Uul Stadium is a 500-seat

association football Association football, more commonly known as football or soccer, is a team sport played between two teams of 11 players who primarily use their feet to propel the ball around a rectangular field called a pitch. The objective of the game is ...

stadium in

Ulaanbaatar Ulaanbaatar (; mn, Улаанбаатар, , "Red Hero"), previously anglicized as Ulan Bator, is the capital and most populous city of Mongolia. It is the coldest capital city in the world, on average. The municipality is located in north ce ...

Mongolia Mongolia; Mongolian script: , , ; lit. "Mongol Nation" or "State of Mongolia" () is a landlocked country in East Asia, bordered by Russia to the north and China to the south. It covers an area of , with a population of just 3.3 million, ...

. Located near the Steppe Arena in the Khan Uul district, the area also includes a winter sports complex. The stadium meets all

FIFA FIFA (; stands for ''Fédération Internationale de Football Association'' ( French), meaning International Association Football Federation ) is the international governing body of association football, beach football and futsal. It was found ...

standards to host A-level matches and competitions.

History

Construction on the field surface began in 2018 as part of the

Forward initiative which helped fund football projects in developing areas. On 19 October 2019, FIFA president

Gianni Infantino Giovanni Vincenzo Infantino (; born 23 March 1970) is a Swiss football administrator with Italian citizenship and the current president of FIFA. He was elected President of FIFA during the 2016 FIFA Extraordinary Congress in February 2016. He ...

handed over the completed field to officials of the

Mongolian Football Federation The Mongolian Football Federation (MFF, mn, Монголын Хөлбөмбөгийн Холбоо, ''Mongolyn Khölbömbögiin Kholboo'') is the governing body of football in Mongolia. It was founded in 1959, and gained both FIFA and AFC affilia ...

as part of a celebration of the association's sixtieth anniversary. When Mongolia was chosen to host the

2023 East Asian Youth Games 3 (three) is a number, numeral and digit. It is the natural number following 2 and preceding 4, and is the smallest odd prime number and the only prime preceding a square number. It has religious or cultural significance in many societie ...

, the local government chose to construct a stadium around the pitch as the venue was to host several events. By May 2021, construction of the arena on the eight-

hectare The hectare (; SI symbol: ha) is a non-SI metric unit of area equal to a square with 100-metre sides (1 hm2), or 10,000 m2, and is primarily used in the measurement of land. There are 100 hectares in one square kilometre. An acre is a ...

plot was estimated to be fifty percent complete. By the middle of the 2022 Mongolia Second League season, most matches were being held at the new arena. Several matches of the Mongolian First League were held there also. Previously, all matches of every tier of Mongolian football were played at the

MFF Football Centre The MFF Football Centre ( mn, МХХ Хөлбөмбөгийн төв ) is a stadium in the independent municipality of Ulaanbaatar within Mongolia. Overview It is currently used for football matches and boasts an artificial playing surface. Th ...

. The addition of the second venue improved the scheduling of matches across leagues. The first official match held at the arena was on 9 May 2014 as Tuuliin Tom Tunuud FC defeated Deren FC 2 in a Second League fixture.

References

{{reflist Football venues in Ulaanbaatar Stadiums in Mongolia