Philly’s bid to host ’26 World Cup kicks off

The start of the 2026 World Cup is still six years away, but the tumult of the present has altered plans for when and how FIFA will select the American host cities.

Site selection takes a step forward Tuesday with virtual workshops for the 17 American cities, including Philadelphia, that hope to host games in the 2026 competition.

The 2026 World Cup will be hosted by the U.S., Mexico and Canada. Eighty games will be played in the expanded, 48-team tourney, with 60 to take place in the U.S. Where Mexico and Canada have selected their three cities each, the U.S. must cull a list of 17 candidates to 10.

“It’s an opportunity for us to get to know the cities better, to know the stadiums, to enter in more details, and that’s what the workshop tomorrow will be all about,” said Colin Smith, FIFA’s Chief Tournaments and Events Officer, on a conference call with media Monday. “A host city of a FIFA World Cup goes well beyond where a stadium is located. It’s a much more complex interaction and integration of what it means to be a successful host and to get the most and embrace the fantastic opportunity that hosting a FIFA World Cup provides.”

The global COVID-19 shutdown has altered timelines. The workshops scheduled for Tuesday were to be held in March in Dallas, back when such business was conducted in person. FIFA had aimed to pick U.S. sites by the spring of 2021, but that has been pushed back indefinitely, Smith said. Tuesday’s sessions will be augmented with virtual meetings with stakeholders in bid cities over the next month. Smith won’t have a date for site selection until later this year, once FIFA can schedule visits to the stadiums involved.

“While we don’t yet know the impact of this delay on the bid schedule, we are excited that the process is re-starting and we are eager to show FIFA and U.S. Soccer that Philadelphia is ready to deliver an incredible experience in 2026,” David L. Cohen, Senior Executive Vice President of Comcast and the chairman of Philadelphia Soccer 2026, said in a statement. “We also expect that the Virtual Bidder’s Conference will provide all candidate host cities with important, grounding information that will help to inform our bid preparation moving forward.”

Montreal, Edmonton and Toronto are the three Canadian sites along with Mexico City, Monterrey and Guadalajara in Mexico.

Philadelphia’s bid is built on Lincoln Financial Field, which well exceeds the minimum capacity of 40,000 seats. But game day facilities are only one facet. Host cities require infrastructure for soccer (training facilities, etc.) and for travelers (hotels, airports, general accessibility). Philadelphia’s bid committee includes big corporations like Comcast and the Eagles, as well as the Philadelphia Union and the Philadelphia Convention and Visitors Bureau. The ability to host sporting events like the NFL Draft and non-sporting events (World Meeting of Families and Papal Visit, the Democratic National Convention) are selling points.

Veterans Stadium was not one of nine host venues for the 1994 men’s

World Cup. The Linc was among six venues for the 2003 women’s World Cup, hastily relocated from China during the SARS outbreak.

FIFA establishes requirements for venues and has the final say. But U.S. Soccer will shepherd it through the vetting, integrating information on how hosting can benefit an area’s growth in the sport. Former U.S. Soccer CEO Dan Flynn, who remains a senior advisor in the process, is focused on that aspect, how picking a city will change its soccer conditions on the day after the World Cup.

“The event is not just the event any more,” Flynn said. “U.S. Soccer’s (event) is going to be on the soft side in ways that our membership can either grow or be connected to the event ... how we can culturally extend, go beyond just the sports fan to make the event something more than just a soccer or global football event.”

“What does a host city want to achieve from hosting a World Cup?,” Smith said. “What can this World Cup bring to them as much as what the city can bring to us? What are they looking to get out of it? And what big events have they hosted in the past? It’s really working with them in a partnership through all those different aspects. There’s no one sort of golden thread that runs through a perfect host city and stadium. It really is the integration of many, many factors that we look at.”