Iran has no national sport fixed by law: no statute of the Majlis or government decree names one. By long tradition, though, freestyle wrestling is regarded as Iran's national sport, and Iranians often call it the country's "first sport", while football is the game most Iranians actually watch and play. Wrestling has the strongest claim on history and results: it has produced 55 of Iran's 88 Summer Olympic medals, it descends from the koshti practised in the zurkhaneh gyms, and the freestyle team has been world champion seven times. Football, run by a federation founded in 1920, fills the 78,116-seat Azadi Stadium in Tehran. Volleyball and polo, which began in Persia as chovgan, are the other names that come up.
What Iranian Law Says, and What Tehran's Crowds Say
Some countries settle the question on paper. Iran never has. Sport is managed by the state, but the bodies that run it have changed name and shape many times rather than handing out symbolic titles. A National Sports Association was set up in 1935, sport was folded into the Education Ministry in 1960, a Sports and Recreation Organization followed in 1971, and since the 1979 revolution a government Physical Education Organization has carried the job. None of these steps named a national sport.
That leaves custom and results, and the two point in different directions. Custom points to wrestling. The Persian word is koshti, and it carries moral weight: the ideal wrestler is a pahlevan, a hero expected to show javanmardi, a code of chivalry and generosity. Popularity points to football, which is now the most popular sport in the country, with volleyball close behind as one of the two biggest spectator games.
Money has always been tight for all of them. In 2010 the government's annual sport budget was about $80 million, roughly $1 per person, and a 2015 figure put the share of physically active Iranians at about 20 per cent against a world average of 60. Participation has grown in other ways: Iran counted only about 1,000 female athletes in 1979 and now counts more than 1.4 million, in sports from football and handball to shooting, karate and rock climbing.
Koshti, the Shahnameh and the Zurkhaneh Pit
Wrestling's claim starts in legend. Traditional Iranian wrestling is said to have been practised by Rostam, hero of Ferdowsi's Shahnameh, and the old gyms where it was taught, the zurkhaneh or "house of strength", were built to train warriors. Their system, varzesh-e bastani ("ancient sport"), blends calisthenics, strength work with wooden clubs called mil and metal shields called sang, and music. A morshed sets the pace on a goblet drum (zarb) while reciting poetry, and every session ends with combat practice in koshti pahlevani, the heroic wrestling style.
The building itself is distinctive: a covered hall with an opening in the roof and, at its centre, a sunken pit about a metre deep, octagonal or circular, called the gowd. After Sufism spread in the eighth century the practice absorbed spiritual elements, and each session still opens with praise of the Prophet Muhammad and his family. Under the Qajar king Naser al-Din Shah (1848–1896) it reached a high point, with competitions at court every 21 March for Nowruz and an armlet presented to the champion. Reza Shah's modernising governments of the 1920s treated it as a relic, and it declined until his son, Mohammad Reza Shah, tried to revive it.
UNESCO inscribed "Pahlevani and Zoorkhaneh rituals" on its intangible heritage list in 2010, and an International Zurkhaneh Sport Federation, founded on 10 October 2004, now counts 72 member countries. Regional folk styles survive alongside it, such as the Turkmen style in Golestan province. Modern Iranian wrestling traces its history to this tradition. Today the strongest wrestling province is Mazandaran on the Caspian coast, where the sport is part of local culture, followed by Tehran, Kermanshah, Khorasan and Hamedan.
Fifty-Five of Eighty-Eight: Wrestling's Olympic Share
Results give wrestling its strongest argument. Iran first competed at the Olympics in 1900, when the fencer Freydoun Malkom entered the épée, and won its first medal in 1948 through the weightlifter Jafar Salmasi. Its first gold medals came on the mat at Melbourne in 1956, where Gholamreza Takhti and Emam-Ali Habibi, born in Babol in 1931, both won freestyle titles. Through Paris 2024 Iran had won 88 Summer Olympic medals, and wrestling accounts for 55 of them: 13 gold, 19 silver and 23 bronze. Weightlifting is a distant second with 20.
On the all-time Olympic wrestling table Iran sits tenth by gold medals, behind the Soviet Union, the United States, Japan, Russia, Turkey, Sweden, Finland, Hungary and Bulgaria, a strong showing for a country whose wrestling medals all date from 1952 onward. Greco-Roman was the weaker style for decades: Iran's first Olympic Greco-Roman gold came only on 5 August 2012, when Hamid Sourian beat Azerbaijan's Rovshan Bayramov in the 55 kg final in London. That same London Games became Iran's best Summer Olympics: after later doping reallocations, its tally stands at 13 medals including 7 golds.
Women are the gap in the record. Kimia Alizadeh became Iran's first female Olympic medallist in 2016, in taekwondo, not wrestling. Women's wrestling in Iran is banned unless athletes wear the hijab, which keeps them out of most events sanctioned by United World Wrestling, the sport's world body, of which the Islamic Republic of Iran Wrestling Federation is a member.
Takhti, Yazdani and Seven World Freestyle Titles
One man explains wrestling's place in Iran: Gholamreza Takhti (1930–1968). Born to a poor family in the Khaniabad neighbourhood of south Tehran, he began training at Poulad Club at 15, worked as a labourer in Masjed Soleyman, and was spotted during military service. He won Iran's first international wrestling medal, a silver at the 1951 world championships in Helsinki, then Olympic gold in 1956 and world titles in 1959 in Tehran and 1961 in Yokohama. He was three times Pahlevan of Iran, and his nickname Jahan Pahlevan reflected his conduct as much as his medals. The Pahlavan Takhti Cup, an international tournament held in Iran whose 45th edition took place in Isfahan in 2025, carries his name.
The team record is as strong. Iran's freestyle squad has been world champion seven times, in 1961, 1965, 1998, 2002, 2013, 2015 and 2025, and the Greco-Roman team won world titles in 2014 and 2025. The modern line runs through Hassan Yazdani, born in 1994, who won Olympic gold at 74 kg in Rio in 2016 and world titles at 86 kg in 2017, 2019 and 2021, and Sourian, a six-time world champion. Wrestling has even served diplomacy: after Mohammad Khatami's election in 1997, wrestling exchanges were weighed as an Iranian version of ping-pong diplomacy with the United States.
Football: From the 1920 Federation to Azadi Stadium
If the question is what Iranians watch, the answer is football. The Football Federation Islamic Republic of Iran was founded in 1920 and joined FIFA in 1948. In 1926 a Tehran XI crossed the border to Baku for the first away match by an Iranian side, and the national team, Team Melli, played its first match on 23 August 1941 in Kabul. Its golden generation, with Ali Parvin and Nasser Hejazi among them, won three straight AFC Asian Cups, in 1968, 1972 and 1976.
Iran has qualified for seven World Cups (1978, 1998, 2006, 2014, 2018, 2022 and 2026) and has won three matches at the finals, against the United States in 1998, Morocco in 2018 and Wales in 2022, though it has never passed the group stage. Its best-known player, Ali Daei from Ardabil, scored 108 goals for Iran and held the world record for men's international goals until Cristiano Ronaldo passed it in 2021.
The venue that anchors it all is Azadi Stadium in western Tehran's District 22. Opened on 17 October 1971 as the Aryamehr Stadium and renamed "Azadi" (freedom) after 1979, it was built for the 1974 Asian Games, when Tehran became the first city in West Asia to host them. Now all-seater with 78,116 places, it is home to the national team and to Esteghlal and Persepolis, whose Tehran derby was first played on 5 April 1968 at Amjadieh Stadium. The domestic top flight, now the Persian Gulf Pro League, was founded in 2001; Persepolis won the first title. Women were barred from watching football there from the early 1980s until FIFA insisted they be admitted to World Cup qualifiers; in October 2019 they attended a match in Iran for the first time in 40 years.
Volleyball and Chovgan, the Outside Candidates
Volleyball is the other mass-audience team game, and Iran's men rank among Asia's strongest sides. The national team, run by the Iran Volleyball Federation, has won the Asian Championship four times (2011, 2013, 2019 and 2021), took Asian Games gold at Incheon in 2014, Jakarta-Palembang in 2018 and Hangzhou in 2022, and won bronze at the 2017 FIVB World Grand Champions Cup. In August 2007 the under-19 team won the world title in Mexico, the first world gold for any Iranian team sport.
The last candidate is the oldest. Polo began in ancient Iran as chovgan, a game of the nobility that enjoyed royal patronage under the Parthians (247 BC–AD 224) and formed part of royal education at the Sasanian court; Shapur II is recorded learning it at seven, in AD 316. In Isfahan, Naqsh-e Jahan Square, built between 1598 and 1629 and measuring 160 by 560 metres, served as a polo ground watched by Safavid shahs from the Ali Qapu palace. After 1979 the equestrian sports fell from favour as relics of the aristocracy, but UNESCO listed Iran's chovgan in 2017, and Turkmen horse racing still draws crowds at Gonbad-e Kavus and Bandar Torkaman.
Put briefly: wrestling by tradition and medals, football by crowds, and no law either way. Wrestling's heartland follows the country's map, from Mazandaran on the Caspian to the clubs of the largest cities in Iran, and the mountains and plains behind it are covered in Iran's geography. For a neighbour where oil wrestling holds a similar place, see the national sport of Turkey.