Hossein Kalani scored the first hat-trick in the tournament's history, in the 1972 edition.
This is a list of hat-tricks in the AFC Asian Cup, that being when a player scores three or more goals in a tournament match of the AFC Asian Cup (not including qualification matches). Hat-tricks have occurred nineteen times across the eighteen editions.
The first tournament was held in 1956, however no hat-tricks were scored in the first four competitions. The first instance was in 1972, where Hossein Kalani scored three goals for Iran against Iraq in the group stage.[1] Later on in the same tournament again for Iran, Ali Jabbari scored three goals inside nine minutes to defeat Thailand 3–2. The first time a player would score four goals in a match would be 1980, where Behtash Fariba achieved the feat in a 7–0 win for Iran over Bangladesh. After 1980, three tournaments went by without a hat-trick before Ali Daei scored four goals for Iran in a 6–2 win over South Korea in 1996, also marking the first time at least three goals were scored in a match in the knockout stage. Two tournaments later in 2004, another knockout stage hat-trick was achieved by Ali Karimi for Iran in a 4–3 win against South Korea, again in the quarter-finals. In the 2023 tournament, Akram Afif became the first player to register a hat-trick in the final of the competition, scoring all three of Qatar's goals in their 3–1 victory against Jordan; he was also the first player whose hat-trick consisted solely of penalty kicks.
Iran have scored the most hat-tricks with six, while Bangladesh and Uzbekistan have conceded the most, with three each. No player has ever scored multiple hat-tricks in the Asian Cup, and every hat-trick scorer has had their side go on to win their match.
^"Iran Wins 8-0; To Face Chinese". The Japan Times. 10 June 1976. p. 10.
^"Profile: Behtash Fariba". Team Melli. Retrieved 2 August 2020. Fariba continued to be a star of the team and he was the first Iranian footballer to score four goals in an international match which was against Bangladesh in that championship