The clubs
Twelve clubs, nine of them from Doha, sharing nine grounds between them. Two of those grounds host two clubs each.
Qatari club football is concentrated in and around one city. Most of the twelve are Doha clubs, and the ones that are not, Al-Rayyan, Al-Wakrah, Al-Shamal and Lusail, are inside an hour's drive of it. Al-Shamal, up in the north of the country, is the furthest away and has the smallest home ground in the league at 5,000.
Seven of the twelve have won the league. Al Ahli, Al-Sailiya, Al Shahaniya and Lusail have not, although Al Ahli has Amir Cup wins behind it and Lusail only joined the Football Association's league structure in 2014.
The twelve of 2026-27
Updated 4 Oct 2026| Club | City | Home ground | Titles | Now |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Al Sadd | Doha | Jassim bin Hamad | 19 | 1 |
| Al Duhail | Doha | Abdullah bin Khalifa | 8 | 5 |
| Al-Rayyan | Al Rayyan | Ahmad bin Ali | 8 | 2 |
| Qatar SC | Doha | Suheim bin Hamad | 8 | 11 |
| Al-Arabi | Doha | Grand Hamad | 7 | 4 |
| Al-Gharafa | Doha | Thani bin Jassim | 7 | 9 |
| Al-Wakrah | Al Wakrah | Saoud bin Abdulrahman | 2 | 10 |
| Al Ahli | Doha | Hamad bin Khalifa | 0 | 8 |
| Al Shahaniya | Doha | Grand Hamad | 0 | 7 |
| Al-Sailiya | Doha | Hamad bin Khalifa | 0 | 12 |
| Al-Shamal | Al Shamal | Al-Shamal SC | 0 | 3 |
| Lusail | Lusail | Lusail Stadium | 0 | 6 |
Titles and grounds from Wikipedia, 2025-26 Qatar Stars League and Qatar Stars League; current positions from the league's own standings page, read on 4 October 2026. The colour mark beside each club is built from its first-kit colours, not from its badge.
What changed over the summer
Umm Salal finished bottom of 2025-26 and were relegated to Qatar Stars League 2. Lusail came up in their place, a club founded in 2014 whose own ground, Al Seliah Stadium, holds about 3,000; they are playing their 2026-27 home matches at Lusail Stadium instead.
Al Shahaniya finished eleventh last season, went into the relegation play-off and stayed up by beating Al Kharaitiyat 3-0 at Jassim bin Hamad Stadium on 9 May 2026. Al-Sailiya had come up a year earlier, in place of Al-Khor.
Reading a Qatari club name
Most of the clubs are named after the district or town they come from, which makes the map easier to hold in your head than the spellings suggest. Al Sadd, Al-Gharafa, Al-Sailiya and Al Shahaniya are all Doha districts. Al Rayyan, Al Wakrah, Al Shamal and Lusail are municipalities or cities in their own right. Al-Arabi means "the Arab", Al Ahli means "the national", and Al Duhail is the newest of the big names: it carried the name Lekhwiya until 2017, and its title list starts in 2010-11.
Transliteration is the other trap. Al Sadd also appears as Al-Sadd and Al Sadd SC, Amir Cup also as Emir Cup, and the club now called Al Duhail spent years as Lekhwiya. The older spellings are still all over the record books, and an archived Qatari football site from 2018 will use a different set from a 2026 one.