FIFA World Cup 2026: MetLife Stadium in New Jersey to host football's biggest summit

Of the 104 matches in the 2026 FIFA World Cup, 78 matches will be played in the United States and 13 matches will be played in Mexico and Canada. There are no fewer than six matches per day.

New Jersey: The 2026 FIFA World Cup final will be played at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey, taking on Texas and California as the football show. FIFA awarded the July 19 championship to the $1.6 billion venue, which opened in 2010, the culmination of an extensive 48-nation, 104-match tournament that will be spread across three countries for the first time .

Located about 10 miles from Manhattan, MetLife was promoted by both New York and New Jersey, where the stadium was built in the Meadowlands swamps. The country of Bruce Springsteen, Jon Bon Jovi and Frank Sinatra will be the center of the world on Sunday, when Lionel Messi's Argentina will try to win its second title in a row, or a successor will emerge.

“It will be a celebration of our diversity and our values,” New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy said in a telephone interview. “The bigger picture is what leads there and what we leave behind in the coming decades.”

FIFA made the announcement on Sunday in a television studio in Miami, assigning the opener of the 39-day tournament to Mexico City's Estadio Azteca on June 11 and the final to the home of the NFL's New York Jets and Giants. Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones had lobbied to have the finals held at his AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas.

“The competition was about the perception of the coast, of New York or Los Angeles,” he said. “If this were focused solely on America and the United States, it wouldn't have been such a formidable thing to overcome. But internationally that is formidable to overcome.”

All matches from the quarter-finals onwards will be played in the United States. The semifinals are on July 14 at AT&T and the next day at Mercedes Benz Stadium in Atlanta. The quarterfinals are July 9 at Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Massachusetts, the next day at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, California, and July 11 at Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City, Missouri, and Hard Rock Stadium in Miami Gardens, Florida. The third place match will take place at Hard Rock on July 18.

The American team is training in a suburb of Atlanta ahead of the tournament and opens on June 12 in SoFi. The Americans play seven days later at Lumen Field in Seattle and close the group stage in SoFi on June 25. Since reaching the semifinals of the first World Cup in 1930, the US has advanced to the quarterfinals only once, in 2002.

“It's about making our nation proud,” said U.S. coach Gregg Berhalter. “One way to really grow the game and change soccer in America forever is to perform well and do something no American team has ever done before.”

Seventy-eight of the 104 matches will be played in the US, with 13 matches each in Mexico and Canada, and there will be as many as six matches per day. AT&T will host nine high-tournament level matches. There will be eight each at MetLife, SoFi and Mercedes Benz; seven apiece at Hard Rock, Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Mass., and NRG Stadium in Houston; and six each at Lumen, Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia, Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City, Missouri, and Levi's Stadium in Santa Clara, California.

FIFA officials have not publicly explained their venue decision-making process. Philadelphia's final match will be a round of 16 match on July 4, the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia will likely host the All-Star Game on July 14.

Santa Clara is the only American site that will no longer host a competition after the new round of 32. AT&T will host two round of 32 matches. FIFA expanded the World Cup from 32 to 48 countries, increased the number of matches from 64 and announced the 16 locations in 2022.

Murphy learned of the decision during a watch party in a MetLife Stadium suite. He was not discouraged by a British tabloid on January 17 stating that the final would take place at AT&T. “We did everything we could to put our heads down, focus on the job at hand and block out the noise a little bit, and that turned out to be a winning formula,” Murphy said.

Mexico will play its second match at Estadio Akron in Guadalajara on June 18 and return to Azteca on June 24. Mexico City will host five matches, four each at Estadio BBVA and Guadalajara in Monterrey. Canada plays its opening first-round match on June 12 in Toronto, and then at BC Place in Vancouver, British Columbia, on June 18 and 24. Each location in Canada will host 13 matches.

A country will have to play eight games to win the title, compared to seven since 1982. All eleven US stadiums are home to NFL teams. Hard Rock will host this year's Copa América final on July 14, while MetLife was the venue for the 2016 Copa América final. Both the 1970 and 1986 World Cup finals took place in Azteca.

When the U.S. hosted the 24-nation, 52-game tournament in 1994, the final was at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California, the opener was at Chicago's Soldier Field and the semifinals were at Giants Stadium in East Rutherford and the Rose Bowl .

With the additional teams, the length of the tournament will grow from 29 days in the shortened 2022 schedule in Qatar and 32 days for the 2018 tournament in Russia. Only one match involves a team that has not had at least three days off. FIFA divided the group stage into Eastern, Central and Western regions and aimed to make travel shorter for group winners.

Stadiums in Arlington, Atlanta and Houston have retractable roofs that are expected to be closed due to the summer heat, and Inglewood and Vancouver have fixed roofs. Artificial turf will be replaced with grass in Arlington, Atlanta, East Rutherford, Foxborough, Houston, Inglewood, Seattle and Vancouver.

Several locations are expected to increase their footprint to accommodate a 75-by-115-yard (68-by-105-meter) playing field, including AT&T, MetLife and SoFi.