FIFA chooses New York for the final, Mexico for the first game and the West Coast for the USMNT.

FIFA chooses New York for the final, Mexico for the first game and the West Coast for the USMNT.

The 2026 World Cup will open in Mexico City and conclude at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey. The U.S. men’s national team will play in Southern California and Seattle.

The semifinals will be staged in Atlanta and Arlington, Texas. And overall, 78 of 104 games will be in the United States.

Those were the top-line takeaways Sunday as FIFA revealed foundational pieces of the most complex World Cup schedule ever.

After months of lobbying, New York and MetLife Stadium beat Dallas and AT&T Stadium to the grand prize.

The 16 North American cities selected — 11 in the U.S., three in Mexico, and two in Canada — learned the dates and magnitude of the games they’ll get to host. Officials in New York and New Jersey celebrated.

The final is the crown jewel, the planet’s most-watched sporting event, an unparalleled showpiece, and a big reason Sunday’s announcement was so eagerly anticipated.

The 2026 World Cup final will be held at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey, on July 19, the world soccer governing body FIFA announced on Sunday.

The United States men’s national team begins its 2026 World Cup journey in Los Angeles, playing its first group-stage game at SoFi Stadium on June 12.

The Americans will play all of their group-stage matches on the West Coast, with the next two games in Seattle and back in Los Angeles.

“It’s going to be a special World Cup,” Berhalter said after the announcement was made. “To have the final in New York, New Jersey is a dream come true for me.

Being from that area, and I’m sure for most people from that area, it’s an area with a rich tradition of soccer and producing players.

“To think about when I was little, going to watch the [New York] Cosmos and them selling out Giants Stadium, and now this stadium is going to host a World Cup final. It’s really special.”

The opening match of the tournament — hosted by the U.S., Mexico, and Canada — will be held in Mexico City, with Mexico playing a yet-to-be-determined opponent in its group and the remainder of its matches on home soil.

This will mark the third time Mexico has hosted World Cup matches, after serving as the host country in 1970 and 1986.

Canada will host its first-ever men’s World Cup match on June 12 when it starts group play in Toronto, followed by a pair of games in Vancouver.

The semifinals will be played on July 14 at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas, and the following day at Mercedes Benz Stadium in Atlanta.

Quarterfinals will be at Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Massachusetts, on July 9, at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, California, the following day, and at Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City, Missouri, and Hard Rock Stadium in Miami Gardens, Florida, on July 11. The third-place game will be at Hard Rock on July 18.

The U.S. men’s national team will begin their 2026 World Cup campaign at SoFi Stadium in the Los Angeles suburb of Inglewood, which will mark their first World Cup game on home soil since 1994.

SoFi Stadium officially won the rights to host the USMNT during the competition on Sunday, during FIFA’s show announcing the sites for the 2026 World Cup. They then return to Southern California to wrap up the group stage on June 25.

The match will serve as the kickoff of the World Cup’s slate in the U.S. on June 12, while the USMNT will play at Seattle’s Lumen Field on June 19 for their second group stage match.

The USMNT’s group stage schedule allows the team plenty of time to recover in between matches thanks to both the number of days in between matches and the minimal travel.

Head coach Gregg Berhalter said FIFA’s selection reflected the feedback he and U.S. Soccer were able to give the governing body before the venues were locked in.

“The one piece of input was really about travel, trying to minimize travel so for that, it’s huge,” he said in a press conference on Sunday.

“Whether you’re on the East Coast and you don’t have to travel often or on the West Coast and don’t have to travel often.

I think it gets tricky when you talk about four or five-hour flights in between games, different time zone shifts.”

Though the USMNT’s plans for 2026 are not confirmed yet, Berhalter expects that the team will use the Los Angeles area as a base camp during the group stage and travel to Seattle for the one game in the Pacific Northwest.

Before the games begin, he also anticipates that the hosts will spend time at U.S. Soccer’s national training center in Atlanta, which is currently under construction but is expected to be open before the 2026 tournament.