The Emil Alexandrescu Stadium (Stadionul Emil Alexandrescu) is a multi-purpose stadium in the Copou district of Iași and the home ground of football club Politehnica Iași. The present stadium dates largely from a major reconstruction completed in 1960 and has a capacity of around 11,400 spectators.
Football was played on the site long before the present stadium was built, with several Iași clubs using an earlier arena there during the interwar period and after the Second World War. The ground was extensively rebuilt in 1959-1960 and inaugurated on August 23, 1960, with a friendly between CSMS Iași and Nistru Chișinău. Known during the communist period as Stadionul 23 August, it received its present name in 1992 in memory of Emil Alexandrescu, a midfielder for CSMS during the early 1960s who later became mayor of Iași. Alexandrescu had been part of the team that first brought Iași into Romania’s top division in 1960.
The stadium retains the broad oval layout created during the 1960 reconstruction, with low uncovered stands and terraces wrapping around the athletics track and a larger official stand along one side of the pitch. Individual seating installed during modernization work in 2004 brought the capacity to roughly 11,400, while floodlights were inaugurated in 2006. The arena has also hosted athletics and other sports, concerts, and major football events outside regular league matches, including the 2010 Romanian Cup final.
CSMS, the club that opened the rebuilt stadium in 1960, had developed from Iași’s postwar university football movement. Its roots go back to Sportul Studențesc Iași, founded in 1945, while a 1958 merger helped create Clubul Sportiv Muncitoresc Studențesc Iași. The team reached Divizia A for the first time in 1960 and recorded its best league finish, sixth place, in the 1965-66 season before adopting the Politehnica Iași name in 1967. Iași also reached the Romanian Cup semifinals in 1948, 1963, 1978, and 1985.
The original Politehnica club folded in 2010, after which a new Iași club continued professional football at the stadium and later regained the Politehnica name and identity. This team matched the city’s best top-flight finish with sixth place in 2017-18 and reached another Romanian Cup semifinal in 2020. Its most notable international moment came in 2016, when Iași made its first appearance in UEFA competition and drew 2-2 with Hajduk Split at the Emil Alexandrescu Stadium in the Europa League qualifying rounds.
