We prove a criterion for K-stability of a Q-Fano spherical variety with respect to equivariant special test configurations, in terms of its moment polytope and some combinatorial data associated to the open orbit. Combined with the equivariant version of the Yau-Tian-Donaldson conjecture for Fano manifolds proved by Datar and Székelyhidi, it yields a criterion for the existence of a Kähler-Einstein metric on a spherical Fano manifold. The results hold also for modified K-stability and existence of Kähler-Ricci solitons.The group of G-equivariant automorphisms Aut G (X) of the spherical manifold X is diagonalizable. The real vector space generated by the linear part ofidentified with an element of N − ⊗ R, and a choice ζ ∈ π −1 (ζ) of lift of ζ, we denote by bar DH, ζ (∆ + ) the barycenter of the polytope ∆ + with respect to the measure with density p → e 4ρ−2p, ζ α∈Φ + P κ(α, p) with respect to the Lebesgue measure dp on X(T ) ⊗ R. Our main result is the following.Theorem A. Let X be a Fano spherical manifold. The following are equivalent.(1) There exists a Kähler-Ricci soliton on X with associated complex holomorphic vector field ζ.(2) The barycenter bar DH, ζ (∆ + ) is in the relative interior of the cone 2ρ P + Ξ.(3) The manifold X is modified K-stable with respect to equivariant special test configurations. (4) The manifold X is modified K-stable.The equivalence between (1) and ( 4) holds for any Fano manifold, it is the consequence of the work of Chen, Donaldson and Sun recalled earlier for Kähler-Einstein metrics, and of the work of Datar and Székelyhidi for Kähler-Ricci solitons. When X admits an action of a reductive group G, the equivalence between (1) and ( 3) was shown by Datar and Székelyhidi. What we prove in this article is the equivalence between (2) and (3) in the case of a spherical Fano manifold. Furthermore we prove that the equivalence between (2) and (3) holds for singular Q-Fano spherical varieties.The intuition for our main result came from our previous work on group compactifications, which did not involve K-stability. The proof of a Kähler-Einstein criterion for smooth and Fano group compactifications in [Del15, Del] can be adapted to provide another proof of the criterion for Kähler-Ricci solitons on the same manifolds. Similarly, Wang-Zhu type methods (as used in [WZ04] and [PS10]), together with some results proved for horospherical manifolds in the present paper, could be used to obtain the Kähler-Ricci soliton criterion for these manifolds. One advantage of this other approach is that the value of the greatest Ricci lower bound can be explicitly computed. Alternatively, for horospherical varieties at least, this quantity could be computed using twisted modified K-stability (see [DS]).The computation of the K-stability of a manifold requires two ingredients. The first one is a description of all test configurations (rather, using [DS], all special equivariant test configurations), and the second one is a way to compute the Donaldson-Futaki invariant for all of these test configuration...