Various example embodiments for supporting stateful explicit paths are presented herein. Various example embodiments for supporting stateful explicit paths may be configured to support communication of a packet along a path in an Internet Protocol (IP) network from a first node to a second node, wherein the path includes a set of hops, wherein the packet includes a tuple configured to identify the path, wherein the tuple includes a first IP address of the first node, a second IP address of the second node, and a path identifier of the path, wherein the path identifier of the path is a unique identifier assigned to the path, wherein the communication of the packet along the path from the first node to the second node is supported based on state information configured to map the tuple to a next hop in the set of hops of the path.