The FIFA World Cup roadshow is heading to North America for 2026, and plans for just how the organizational aspect of the showpiece event will come together are already starting to come together.

The event, the most popular sporting tournament in the world, happens every four years, and the 2022 FIFA World Cup took place in Qatar to great fanfare, and 2026 is sure to be a similarly successful edition of the competition. The tournament will take place across the United States, Mexico, and Canada.

Lincoln Financial Field, without a doubt the rightful owner of the tag of being top of the list of best sports arenas and stadiums in Pennsylvania, is one of 11 venues in the US that will host games in the tournament, along with three in Mexico and two in Canada.

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The executive director of FIFA’s commercial operations for the FIFA 2026 World Cup, Ross McCall, discussed plans for Philadelphia for the tournament and what games they may well host in the city:

We have a number of our operational team over. So we’re working with a lot of the stadium folks and going around the stadiums looking at the existing infrastructure, overlaying our operational plans. And then working with the city folk to understand their readiness to host the World Cup from a city perspective across safety and security, transportation, and those sorts of areas.

Since Day 1, we were super impressed by the level of buy-in and in the collective enthusiasm that the city had to offer. We’re providing a platform for the city to showcase who they are to billions of people around the world, and we’ll have fans from all around the world descending on Philadelphia. So I’m sure they’re ready to welcome the world to the city, McCall added.

The United States previously hosted the FIFA World Cup in 1994, an event that was a huge success and one that missed out on Philadelphia in its hosting cities. The competition has expanded since then, leading to more games and, therefore, more cities capable of hosting matches. 

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Lincoln Financial Field has a capacity of 67,594 and is the home of the NFL team, the Philadelphia Eagles, and for a brief time MLS outfit, the Philadelphia Union. The venue was opened in 2003, and the first ticketed event to take place at the stadium was a soccer match between the Premier League side Manchester United and La Liga giants FC Barcelona.

68,396 turned out for that opener, and the venue is regularly used for music events, including, most recently, three dates in Taylor Swift’s immensely successful Eras tour, where the singer-songwriter sold out all gigs and played to a total of over 200,000 fans.

Ed Sheeran, Billy Joel, Stevie Nicks, and Beyonce have all also played dates at the Lincoln Financial Field in 2023, and the stadium is more than capable of proving a big success when it comes to hosting crucial FIFA World Cup matches and many in the city will hope that Philadelphia gets to host one of the latter knockout phase fixtures as well as group stage matches.

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