The 2026 FIFA World Cup's first match in the United States takes place June 12 at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood — four days from now. Los Angeles metropolitan area is preparing to receive hundreds of thousands of international fans from Latin America, Europe, Africa, and Asia, many arriving from countries where dengue fever is endemic or actively spreading.
Travelers will land at LAX, the Western Hemisphere's most internationally connected airport, in a county where the Aedes aegypti mosquito, dengue's primary vector, is now firmly established in residential neighborhoods, including Inglewood, Hawthorne, Compton, and Los Angeles itself, and they will arrive during the peak of Southern California's mosquito season, with the LA County Vector Control Division already monitoring its trap network for signs of viral amplification in the local mosquito population.
