Lakeside Stadium is an Australian sports arena in the South Melbourne suburb of Albert Park. Comprising an athletics track and soccer stadium, it currently serves as the home ground and administrative base for association football club South Melbourne FC, Athletics Victoria, Athletics Australia, Victorian Institute of Sport and Australian Little Athletics.

The venue was built on the site of a former Australian rules football and cricket ground, the Lakeside Oval (also called the Lake Oval and the South Melbourne Cricket Ground), which served for more than a century as the home ground of the South Melbourne Cricket Club, and most notably as the home ground of the South Melbourne Football Club from 1879–1915, 1917–1941 and 1947–1981, though Australian rules football had been played at the site since 1869. The ground has also been used for soccer from at least 1883.

It is one of four sporting facilities in Melbourne organised under the banner of publicly funded organisation Melbourne Sports Centres – the others being the Melbourne Sports and Aquatic Centre (MSAC), the MSAC Institute of Training (MIT) and the State Netball and Hockey Centre (SNHC).

The South Melbourne Cricket Club was formed as early as 1862. The oval remained home to the South Melbourne Cricket Club until 1994.

The South Melbourne Football Club was formed in 1874.

With the formation of Albert Park from a low lying swamp, a growing population and the popularity of football in the 1870s, an oval was established at the South Melbourne end of the park by the late 1870s, and both clubs soon adopted it as their home ground.

What came to be known as the Lake Oval or Lakeside Oval served most prominently as the home ground for Australian rules football club South Melbourne, in both the Victorian Football Association and the Victorian Football League.

In 1887 an elaborate new grandstand was constructed, it opened in time to host Tasmania vs Essendon match which held a capacity crowd of 10,000 spectators.