If there’s one thing FIFA is good at, it’s putting on cringey television events that start late and surpass the allotted run time. Thursday’s announcement of the host cities for the 2026 World Cup in the U.S., Canada and Mexico was no different.
But at the end of the hour-long broadcast that included cameos from random celebrities and a musical performance, we found out which cities would be hosting the expanded World Cup in 2026.
With the field of 22 finalist cities narrowed down to the actual 16 hosts, the 2026 World Cup feels real now. The selections were broken down into three regions (West, Central and East), settling at a final list of:
West
- Vancouver
- Seattle
- Bay Area
- Los Angeles (SoFi Stadium)
- Guadalajara
Central
- Kansas City
- Dallas
- Atlanta
- Houston
- Monterrey
- Mexico City
East
- Toronto
- Boston
- Philadelphia
- Miami
- New York
Cincinnati, D.C., Denver, Edmonton, Nashville and Orlando all missed the cut.
The big surprise out of the selections was probably that the joint D.C./Baltimore bid lost out to Boston. The embarrassing state of FedExField had Baltimore joining that bid at the last moment to host games at the Ravens’ M&T Bank Stadium. But it wasn’t enough to get D.C. on the list as it became a rare capital city to not host a World Cup.
Denver will also be disappointed to lose out to Kansas City — the likely final Central city chosen. But despite Denver’s great weather and ability to host large events, the intense lobbying from Kansas City (which has a massive soccer culture) along with the U.S. Soccer infrastructure and new airport in KC were too much for Denver to overcome.
FIFA president Gianni Infantino said that he didn’t have a timetable for when the opener, knockout stage, semi and final sites will be decided. But in the meantime, soccer fans had plenty of thoughts on what FIFA chose for its 2026 World Cup hosts.
