An interior view of MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey.
Per-Anders Pettersson | Getty Images
The 2026 World Cup final will be played on July 19 at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey.
FIFA made the announcement Sunday in a Miami television studio, assigning the first match of the 39-day tournament to Mexico City’s Estadio Azteca on June 11.
Team USA will play its first game at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, California on June 12, then play seven days later at Lumen Field in Seattle and finish the group stage at SoFi on June 25.
The third place game will be played at Hard Rock Stadium in Miami Gardens, Florida.
AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas, which had hoped to host the final, has the most games of any venue with nine, and officials said one of the games is a semifinal. Officials at Mercedes Benz Stadium in Atlanta said the other semifinal would be played there.
FIFA officials have not publicly explained their decision-making process on the site.
FIFA expanded the World Cup from 32 to 48 nations and increased the number of matches from 64 to 104. The 2026 tournament will be co-hosted by the United States, Mexico and Canada, with all quarterfinal matches to be played in the United States. FIFA has announced the 16 sites in 2022.
Canada will play their first game of the first round in Toronto on June 12, then the next two games in Vancouver, British Columbia.
A country will have to play eight matches to win the title, up from seven since 1982.
Other US sites include Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Massachusetts; NRG Stadium in Houston; Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City, Missouri; Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia; Levi Stadium in Santa Clara, California.
Matches in Mexico will also be played at the Estadio BBVA in Monterrey and the Estadio Akron in Guadalajara.
All 11 stadiums in the United States host NFL teams. Hard Rock Stadium 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 were held at Azteca.
When the United States hosted the 24-nation, 52-game tournament in 1994, the final was at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California, and the first at Soldier Field in Chicago.
With the additional teams, the length of the tournament will increase from the 29 days of the shortened 2022 schedule in Qatar to the 32 days of the 2018 tournament in Russia.
Only one match will involve a team that has not had at least three days’ rest. FIFA divided the group stage into East, Central and West regions and intended to shorten travel for the group winners.
Stadiums in Arlington, Atlanta and Houston have retractable roofs that would have to be closed due to summer heat, while Inglewood and Vancouver have fixed roofs.
Artificial turf will be replaced by grass in Arlington, Atlanta, East Rutherford, Foxborough, Houston, Inglewood and Vancouver.
Many of the venues are expected to expand their surfaces to accommodate a 75 x 115 yard (68 x 105 meter) playing field, including AT&T and MetLife.
FIFA has not announced start times. The 1994 championship began at 12:30 pm PDT (3:30 pm EDT and 9:30 pm in Central Europe), but the start has been brought forward in recent years as the Asian television market has become more significant for FIFA. The 2022 final in Qatar kicked off at 5pm local time (10am EDT, 4pm Central Europe and 10pm Beijing).