Here’s how things look inside Arrowhead Stadium for players at the World Cup
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Arrowhead Stadium is being transformed and is now known as Kansas City Stadium.
- The field was changed from NFL 120x53 1/3 to FIFA 116x68 yards.
- FIFA set capacity at 71,958 and brought a Bermuda-type pitch.
Arrowhead Stadium is ready for its close-up.
The work is nearly complete as the Chiefs’ home is being transformed into a 2026 World Cup stadium. FIFA on Monday gave reporters a preview of the playing surface and the locker rooms.
Those areas will be occupied by the World Cup teams playing one of the six matches at what is now known as Kansas City Stadium.
The Chiefs’ home locker room essentially has been cut in half to provide a cozier feeling for the team. Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes’ locker is now behind a makeshift blue-and-yellow wall.
Each leather chair has a circular blue sticker of the 2026 World Cup.
The opposing locker room remains the same size, but with World Cup verbiage on the wall. Players from both teams will walk to a staging area, then head down a ramp, then up a few stairs and emerge at midfield.
The hallway to the field has a blue-and-yellow logo of the United States, which is co-hosting the World Cup with Mexico and Canada. The Chiefs’ red is gone, and so are the banners of their championships and accomplishments.
The Chiefs expanded the field’s size from the NFL regulation 120 yards long by 53 1/3 yards wide to the FIFA standard for the World Cup: 116 yards by 68 yards.
“We played the NFL season, we had to take that field out, we had to remove the bleachers in the north sideline, and then bring that up to grade to have it consistent with the rest of the NFL sort of pitch,” said Matt Kenny, Chiefs executive vice president and chief operations officer. “There’s some nuances with the way that the water flows and where the sort of peaks and valleys are.
“We did that this spring, and with respect to growing grass in, you see this grass lighting equipment out here to make sure that when we don’t have all the weather that is ideal, that the corners are taken care of as well. So the pitch is just about ready to go.”
Rather than two sidelines, there is just one for the World Cup. Each team will have a covered bench for coaches and reserve players.
FIFA, which covered the Chiefs’ Ring of Honor, said capacity for the stadium is 71,958. For Chiefs games, it’s 76,416. And it brought in a special field, according to Luiz Andre Mello, FIFA World Cup 2026 venue director of operations.
“That was something proprietary that FIFA, for the last five years, have kind of discussed with the University of Tennessee and Michigan State University,” Mello said. “So we brought this, has been like a month or so now, and we make sure that’s a Bermuda type adapted to the weather in KC.
“You can see that it’s a different type of pitch than we have for an (NFL) football match, and for our football, all the stadiums have the Bermuda in different categories. This one is the one that we kind of most suited for our weather (in KC).”
The biggest issue FIFA faced was access to the field. Players will enter at one point, at midfield, while media folks and those involved in pregame entertainment will use a tunnel in the corner of the stadium.
Mello called it a unique part of the stadium.
“Apart from the tunnel that you guys just walked in, which is the 50-yard one, we have one service tunnel that can accommodate ceremonies, photographers, broadcast media in general. So that’s the tricky part about here,” Mello said. “Every stadium has a different one.
“The tricky here is pretty much how to accommodate what we’re saying is about 300-plus people in a matter of 30 minutes (before a game), because you’re going to have ceremony (workers) going in, photographers going in, broadcast going in, players going to the middle, then you have to take all the elements of a pre-match ceremony, and then you have to kind of stage everyone around so all this flows and all these movements are the one kind of tricky part. But it’s something that each stadium has a different one, and this is the challenge about KC, but I’m really comfortable.”
