World Cup games are a win-win in Houston
Houston is in the running to be named one of 10 U.S. cities to host the 2026 FIFA Men’s World Cup soccer games — along with cities in Canada and Mexico. A FIFA delegation will visit Houston this week to evaluate our city as one of 17 finalist locations in the U.S.
According to the president of Houston’s World Cup bid committee, hosting the six World Cup games at NRG Stadium “would be like hosting six Super Bowls” in succession. Five years from now, food servers and janitors will be serving and cleaning for soccer fans from around the world. Construction workers and stagehands will be building a massive site for FanFest — a monthlong street festival where thousands can watch and celebrate the games.
The Texas Gulf Coast Area Labor Federation and other local labor organizations believe that if FIFA wants a city with great facilities, great service, protection of human rights and a positive legacy from the games, Houston is the right choice.
The FIFA delegation will find here excellent stadium facilities and a large number of high-quality hotels near the convention center. They will also find a diverse, dedicated hospitality workforce.
They will see how, in recent years, the labor movement has partnered with the city and county governments and responsible employers to guarantee resilient public services, ensure efficient and safe completion of construction projects that create good jobs for all and design training programs to create a pipeline for Houstonians of all backgrounds to enjoy long-term careers. These initiatives include the city of Houston’s Build Houston Better standards and workforce protections adopted by Harris County in 2019.
They will learn about the bid committee’s plan to launch a Soccer Innovation Institute — a tool that aims to increase access tothe game, enhance the fan experience and strengthen the sport’s social and environmental impact locally and globally.
But Houston’s bid is also strong because, when FIFA required bidding cities to craft plans to protect human rights during the games with local stakeholders, city leaders and the bid committee went above and beyond.
Over the course of nine months, the Houston bid committee actively solicited input and feedback from a broad range of nonprofit, community and worker organizations in several human rights areas. While the final human rights plan the Houston team submitted to FIFA has not yet been made public, we are confident that it deals in a serious way with risks and opportunities connected to the World Cup in areas such as workers’ rights, LGBTQ rights, economic opportunity for disadvantaged communities and prevention of human trafficking.
The process provided meaningful opportunities for labor organizations to identify and prioritize risks for how workers’ rights could be violated during the World Cup and propose mechanisms not just to mitigate these risks but to go beyond and proactively raise workplace standards for future mega-events in Houston. We know from our discussions with labor organizations in other U.S. bid cities that the depth and quality of the Houston bid committee’s engagement on human rights greatly surpassed what our peers saw in those other cities.
Working together, we in Houston followed FIFA’s direction and made human rights a real priority. Now the choice is in their hands. If FIFA gives serious weight to Houston’s physical infrastructure, workforce skills and our human rights plan — as they committed to do — there is no doubt in our mind that Houston should be named a host city.
We also hope that when the FIFA delegation comes to town, they will engage directly with local and national human rights stakeholders to hear about what’s important to them.
Bottom line: Houston’s bid is strong. Local labor organizations support Houston’s bid to host the World Cup because the bid committee has made commitments to adopt effective mechanisms that will ensure the jobs created are good jobs accessible to local residents and disadvantaged individuals. If Houston is chosen and proper job protections are put in place, thousands of cooks, security guards, janitors and construction workers will not just see more dollars in their pockets in the short-term, but also jobs with higher wages and stronger standards in the long run.
All of us — labor, business and government — want to work with FIFA to make the 2026 games a model for how megasporting events should address crosscutting issues including human rights and workers’ rights. If FIFA selects Houston to host in 2026, we will embrace the opportunity to do that together.