2026 World Cup ultimate shall be performed at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey

The 2026 World Cup ultimate shall be performed at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey, on July 19.

FIFA made the announcement Sunday at a Miami tv studio, allocating the opener of the 39-day event to Mexico Metropolis’s Estadio Azteca on June 11.

The U.S. group will play its opener at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, California, on June 12, then play seven days later at Seattle’s Lumen Subject and end the group stage at SoFi on June 25.

The third-place recreation shall be at Exhausting Rock Stadium in Miami Gardens, Florida.

AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas, which had hoped to host the ultimate, has probably the most matches of any venue with 9, and officers there mentioned one of many video games is a semifinal. Officers at Mercedes Benz Stadium in Atlanta mentioned the opposite semifinal was being performed there.

FIFA officers didn’t publicly clarify their site-decision course of.

FIFA expanded the World Cup from 32 to 48 nations and elevated matches from 64 to 104. The 2026 event shall be co-hosted by the U.S., Mexico and Canada, with all video games from the quarterfinals on being performed within the U.S. FIFA introduced the 16 websites in 2022.

Canada will play its opening first-round match in Toronto on June 12, then its following two video games in Vancouver, British Columbia.

A nation might want to play eight matches to win the title, up from seven since 1982.

Different U.S. websites are Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Massachusetts; NRG Stadium in Houston; Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas Metropolis, Missouri; Lincoln Monetary Subject in Philadelphia; Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, California.

Matches in Mexico additionally shall be performed at Estadio BBVA in Monterrey and Estadio Akron in Guadalajara.

All 11 of the U.S. stadiums are house to NFL groups. Exhausting Rock Stadium will host this 12 months’s Copa América ultimate on July 14, whereas MetLife was the positioning of the 2016 Copa América ultimate.

Each the 1970 and 1986 World Cup finals have been at Azteca.

When the U.S. hosted the 24-nation, 52-game event in 1994, the ultimate was on the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California, and the opener at Chicago’s Soldier Subject.

With the extra groups, the size of the event will develop from 29 days within the shortened 2022 schedule in Qatar and 32 days for the 2018 event in Russia.

Just one match will contain a group that has not had a minimum of three off days. FIFA divided the group stage into East, Central and West areas and meant to make journey shorter for group winners.

The stadiums in Arlington, Atlanta and Houston have retractable roofs which are anticipated to be closed due to summer season warmth, and Inglewood and Vancouver have fastened roofs.

Synthetic turf shall be changed by grass in Arlington, Atlanta, East Rutherford, Foxborough, Houston, Inglewood and Vancouver.

A number of of the venues are anticipated to widen their surfaces to accommodate a 75-by-115 yard (68-by-105 meter) taking part in discipline, together with AT&T and MetLife.

FIFA didn’t announce kickoff occasions. The 1994 championship began at 12:30 p.m. PDT (3:30 p.m. EDT and 9:30 p.m. in Central Europe) however the begin has been moved up in recent times as Asia’s tv market develop into extra important to FIFA. The 2022 ultimate in Qatar began at 5 p.m. native time (10 a.m. EDT, 4 p.m. in Central Europe and 10 p.m. in Beijing).