diff --git a/cmd/geth/main.go b/cmd/geth/main.go
index da1623be7c..ad8ab1fc1e 100644
--- a/cmd/geth/main.go
+++ b/cmd/geth/main.go
@@ -159,6 +159,7 @@ var (
 		utils.BeaconCheckpointFlag,
 		utils.BeaconCheckpointFileFlag,
 		utils.LogSlowBlockFlag,
+		utils.PrefetchWorkersFlag,
 	}, utils.NetworkFlags, utils.DatabaseFlags)
 
 	rpcFlags = []cli.Flag{
diff --git a/cmd/utils/flags.go b/cmd/utils/flags.go
index 7d8c47e4f7..27e840ee64 100644
--- a/cmd/utils/flags.go
+++ b/cmd/utils/flags.go
@@ -28,6 +28,7 @@ import (
 	"net/http"
 	"os"
 	"path/filepath"
+	"runtime"
 	godebug "runtime/debug"
 	"strconv"
 	"strings"
@@ -713,6 +714,13 @@ var (
 		Category:  flags.MiscCategory,
 	}
 
+	PrefetchWorkersFlag = &cli.UintFlag{
+		Name:     "bal.prefetchworkers",
+		Usage:    "The number of concurrent state loading tasks to perform when prefetching BAL state.  Default to the number of cpus",
+		Value:    uint(runtime.NumCPU()),
+		Category: flags.MiscCategory,
+	}
+
 	// RPC settings
 	IPCDisabledFlag = &cli.BoolFlag{
 		Name:     "ipcdisable",
@@ -2459,6 +2467,7 @@ func MakeChain(ctx *cli.Context, stack *node.Node, readonly bool) (*core.BlockCh
 		TrienodeHistory:         ctx.Int64(TrienodeHistoryFlag.Name),
 		NodeFullValueCheckpoint: uint32(ctx.Uint(TrienodeHistoryFullValueCheckpointFlag.Name)),
 
+		PrefetchWorkers: int(ctx.Uint(PrefetchWorkersFlag.Name)),
 		// Disable transaction indexing/unindexing.
 		TxLookupLimit: -1,
 
diff --git a/core/blockchain.go b/core/blockchain.go
index 4009a5414e..33172aff91 100644
--- a/core/blockchain.go
+++ b/core/blockchain.go
@@ -211,6 +211,8 @@ type BlockChainConfig struct {
 	Overrides  *ChainOverrides // Optional chain config overrides
 	VmConfig   vm.Config       // Config options for the EVM Interpreter
 
+	PrefetchWorkers int // number of concurrent go-routines for BAL state prefetching
+
 	// TxLookupLimit specifies the maximum number of blocks from head for which
 	// transaction hashes will be indexed.
 	//
@@ -597,7 +599,7 @@ func (bc *BlockChain) processBlockWithAccessList(parentRoot common.Hash, block *
 	useAsyncReads := bc.cfg.BALExecutionMode != bal.BALExecutionNoBatchIO
 	al := block.AccessList() // TODO: make the return of this method not be a pointer
 	accessListReader := bal.NewAccessListReader(*al)
-	prefetchReader, err := sdb.ReaderEIP7928(parentRoot, accessListReader.StorageKeys(useAsyncReads), runtime.NumCPU())
+	prefetchReader, err := sdb.ReaderEIP7928(parentRoot, accessListReader.StorageKeys(useAsyncReads), bc.cfg.PrefetchWorkers)
 	if err != nil {
 		return nil, err
 	}