Current Australian Football League grounds in Australia
The Australian Football League has numerous grounds upon which senior VFL/AFL games have been played. This list comprises current grounds in use, former grounds in use (both major and minor), regional pre-season grounds and international grounds.
In accordance with the Laws of Australian football, a ground must be grassed, have a minimum length of 135 metres (443 ft) and a minimum width of 110 metres (360 ft).[1] Most Australian rules football grounds are also used for cricket, which is also played on a grassed, oval-shaped ground, and it is commonplace for a ground to be used for football in winter and cricket in summer.
Due to the popularity of Australian rules football, particularly in southern Australia, most of Australia's largest stadiums by capacity are used for Australian rules football; and it is therefore common to use those stadiums for other high-drawing events, particularly sporting events. Sports such as rugby and soccer can be readily played on an Australian rules football arena, as their rectangular fields are small enough to be set on the larger oval.
The oldest Australian Football League ground is the Melbourne Cricket Ground. The ground was built in 1854 and is still used for hosting AFL matches, including each year's Grand Final. The ground also has the largest capacity, at 100,024. The ground to be used most recently for its first Australian Football League matches is Summit Sports Park in Mount Barker, South Australia, during the 2023 season. As of April 2023, 50 different venues have hosted VFL/AFL premiership matches since the league was established in 1897.
AFL/VFL premiership season venues
Current grounds
The following table shows a list of all of grounds that are currently regularly used in the Australian Football League, as of the 2023 AFL season. The table includes grounds where teams have commercial deals in place to transfer home games to these grounds each season but are not full-time tenants of those grounds; in these cases, the club is shown in italics in the current tenants column.
^ abcdeThe club is not a full-time tenant of the ground, but has a commercial deal in place to play home games at the venue.
Former major grounds
Current and former VFL/AFL venues in metropolitan Melbourne. Current venues shown in red; former major venues shown in blue; other venues shown in yellow.
The following table comprises a list of former grounds that were at one stage the primary home ground, or a long-term secondary home ground, for a club to play its VFL/AFL matches on.
Most of the grounds were the original homes of current teams (for example, Arden Street Oval was North Melbourne's home ground) and have ceased hosting VFL/AFL matches, usually due to location and lack of capacity. Princes Park was the last of the Victorian suburban venues to see an AFL game, with the last match occurring in 2005. These grounds now usually serve as a boutique training oval and administrative base for these AFL clubs, and some are used for under age, VFL, AFL Women's or suburban league matches.
Waverley Park (originally known as VFL Park), located in Mulgrave, Victoria was the first purpose-built stadium for VFL/AFL matches, opening in 1970. Until the 1990s, it did not serve as any team's home ground, but was instead a neutral venue to which each club shifted one or two of its home matches each year; in the 1990s, it was adopted as a home ground by Hawthorn and St Kilda. Original plans called for the grounds capacity to be 155,000, which would have made it one of the largest stadiums in the world. The venue, with its planned higher capacity, was originally to be a replacement for the Melbourne Cricket Ground as host of the VFL's Grand Final. However, in 1982/1983, when the extensions to finish the original plans were due to commence, the Government of Victoria refused to approve the plans for the stadium because the upgrade would have threatened the Melbourne Cricket Ground's right to host the Grand Final. Hence, no further development ever occurred and the capacity was set at 78,000. It was used until 1999, and was replaced by the Docklands Stadium.
Football Park, which was located in West Lakes, Adelaide, had a similar history to Waverley Park; it was purpose built for South Australian National Football League (SANFL) games and opened in 1974, replacing Adelaide Oval as the primary venue for the league. Unlike Waverley Park, it did become the venue for SANFL Grand Finals. It was the primary South Australian venue for VFL/AFL matches from 1991, when the league expanded into Adelaide, until 2013, and it was replaced by the newly refurbished Adelaide Oval.
^Adelaide and Port Adelaide played regular season matches at Football Park until the end of the 2013 season, but a NAB Challenge match was played at the ground between the two sides in 2015.
Other minor grounds
Minor grounds have been used in the VFL/AFL, but only sparingly. In addition to former commercial deals to sell home games which are no longer active, there have been two main reasons historically for this:
Due to unavailability of primary home grounds. In particular, minor grounds were also used throughout World War II, as some of the larger grounds throughout Victoria were being occupied by servicemen.
The following is a list of all of the international venues where a game of Australian rules football featuring VFL/AFL clubs has been played (in order of year last used). International matches have included pre-season competition matches or postseason exhibition matches. As of the end of 2018, the only international venues to host matches for premiership points are Westpac Stadium, in Wellington, New Zealand; and Adelaide Arena at Jiangwan Stadium, Shanghai, China.
The first international Australian rules football exhibition match was in London in 1916. A team of Australian soldiers stationed in England at the time formed a team to play against a "training group". The game brought a crowd of 3,000 people that even included the Prince of Wales (later King Edward VIII) and King Manuel II of Portugal.
The more recent AFL international matches have been part of the pre-season competition format and been highly successful. Countries that have hosted such matches include: United Arab Emirates, South Africa and the United Kingdom. There are also plans to expand the game further into countries such as India[57] and Japan.[58]
