Published on: Nov 10, 2025 05:26 pm IST
The JLN Stadium was built in 1982 for the Asian Games held that year. It also hosted the 2010 Commonwealth Games.
The Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium in New Delhi is set to be ‘dismantled’ to build a Sports City, which will cater to all major sports disciplines. The new Sports City venue will also consist of lodging facilities for athletes, according to a PTI report. As of now, the plan is simply a proposal, and a decision on the timeline for the project and its estimated cost hasn’t been made yet.
According to PTI, a Sports Ministry source said, “The stadium will be dismantled. All offices inside the stadium, including the National Anti-Doping Agency (NADA), the National Dope Testing Laboratory (NDTL) and the Income Tax department will be relocated as and when the project takes off.”
“Currently the over 100 acres of land that it occupies is not being used to its optimal level. A Sports City will ensure that we have hosting facilities for major disciplines, training facilities, lodging for athletes when they compete there and even verticals like entertainment will be covered.”
The project will need a certain degree of understanding between multiple ministries. The JLN Stadium also has the headquarters of the Sports Authority of India, which owns the venue. The Khelo India project office is also situated there.
“It is an idea at this stage but let’s see how the feasibility study works out. But the ministry is very serious about going ahead with it,” the source told PTI.
The sports cities in Qatar and Australia are also being analysed to finalise the project in India. According to the report, Sports Minister Mansukh Mandaviya recently visited Doha and toured the Sports City there.
“The JLN project will also be big in scale. This project will ensure that existing infrastructure, that was crumbling inside JLN, will get rebuilt,” the source further added, in the PTI report.
The JLN Stadium was built in 1982 for the Asian Games held that year. It also hosted the 2010 Commonwealth Games, and it was refurbished at a cost of over ₹900 crore for that event. Recently, the stadium hosted the World Para-Athletics C’ship, for which it added further modifications, including the laying of a MONDA track.
