As Kansas City readies for 2026 FIFA World Cup, there’s a vital variable to success
It may seem like only yesterday that Kansas City’s momentum was honored and validated and otherwise elevated by being named a 2026 FIFA World Cup host city.
But that suddenly was ... 30 months ago.
Presto, it’s less than 18 months before we’re immersed in a spectacle on a scale beyond anything we’ve experienced here.
Just over the horizon now, that momentous interval in the history and future of Kansas City is gradually coming more into focus. And it’s going to become far more tangible and clear in the months after the calendar turns and we’ll be saying this is happening, gulp, next year.
To heighten that awareness, the KC 2026 organizing committee soon seeks to have countdown clocks up around the city geared toward the first of six games here starting June 16, 2026.
Inherently tethered to that is the clock ticking down on when it ends here with a quarterfinal on July 11 at what FIFA is calling “Kansas City Stadium” — aka GEHA Field at Arrowhead Stadium.
In the aftermath, we’ll be left to process what really just happened in this fleeting span and what was permanently changed through the temporary transformation.
Beyond the obvious regional economic impact, the exact amount of which will be debated but surely in the hundreds of millions of dollars, this will be all about legacy:
What sort of meaningful changes could come out of the transportation plan due to FIFA early in the second quarter of 2025? And what enduring impressions can we make through our capacity to run a first-class and safe event and through our distinctly Kansas City institutions, culture and hospitality?
Much of that is going to hinge on the work of KC2026 and CEO Pam Kramer’s “team of teams,” 18 working groups which in the last few months have grown to include hiring Jason Sims as director of transportation and Kyle Postell as director of safety and security.
Thousands of volunteers needed
But it’s also going to depend on something unique to us all:
Our own individual willingness to embrace the overwhelming scene.
“We want people here to engage with the World Cup,” Kramer said Wednesday in an interview with The Star.
Not just in terms of literally and figuratively being open for business, paramount as that will be.
But by reaching out and taking part.
By being ready to shrug off some certain inconveniences ahead and extend the typically welcoming warmth that sets this place apart from so many others.
Or, more formally, by becoming one of the thousands needed to volunteer for various duties — particularly when it comes to language assistance and health care.
Not to overstate the point, but ...
“We’ll need all of them,” said Kramer, noting that FIFA will open its volunteer portal and center in late 2025.
Not merely from a practical standpoint, but also in terms of making a statement about who we are.
Although I’ve never been to a World Cup game, I’ve covered 10 Olympic games and venture it’s a similar vibe.
And I came away from all of them appreciating the events and the sites and the broader experience far more because of the spirit of the people hosting.
Not just officials but volunteers on the streets and in the venues and about anywhere you went.
So this isn’t just an organizing committee event or a corporate deal or something going on around us to be merely managed.
It’s the chance of a lifetime to be a real part of something that could hardly be bigger than ourselves.
Per a conservative FIFA estimate shared by KC2026, some 650,000 visitors will come through Kansas City and stay an average of nine days during the 48-nation competition to be conducted in 11 U.S. cities and five in Canada and Mexico.
Many of those, including three national teams and their entourages expected to make their base camps in the region, will have traveled from all over the world for an event perhaps best understood this way:
The 2022 final match between Argentina and France in Qatar drew a global audience of more than a billion — around 10 times the 123 million viewers for the Chiefs’ LVIII Super Bowl victory that made for the most-watched program in U.S. history.
Progress behind scenes
In the most formal ways, the infinite work of meeting the moment is ongoing.
Security exercises are taking place behind the scenes.
Transportation logistics are being crafted with an emphasis on expanding and enhancing regional public transit services in 2025.
A related messaging campaign is likely ahead in an effort to use the World Cup to promote further long-term ridership — something that Kramer herself soon plans to exemplify by riding a bus from Johnson County to KC2026’s downtown office.
Also essentially out of view have been the early stages of adjusting Arrowhead to FIFA standards, with more sophisticated phases ahead soon.
And while the specific parties are confidential, several national teams already have been scouting the three Kansas City-area base camp setups pairing facilities and hotels: Sporting KC’s Compass Minerals National Performance Center in Kansas City, Kansas, and the Sheraton Overland Park; the Kansas City Current training facility in Riverside and Hotel Kansas City and the University of Kansas and Stonehill Hotel in Lawrence.
As of FIFA’s most recent announcement last month, there currently are 49 base-camp options in the U.S., Canada and Mexico with more anticipated to be added.
That means not all will win bids to host them. But it’s widely understood that the quality of the local facilities and our central location figure to make our sites highly appealing when visiting nations submit their site selections after the final draw — expected to be in December 2025 — reveals geographic zones for the group matches.
Think of that day as a global scale NCAA Tournament Selection Sunday, Kramer said, as it determines what parts of the world will be on its way here.
Ask not what your city can do for you
With so much percolating but much left to be shaded in, it’s also a good time to start girding ourselves and stirring your imagination for the event that will be enthralling but also all-consuming.
In its bid, Kansas City had to demonstrate it had 55,000 hotel rooms available within a 2.5-hour radius of the city.
Closer to the epicenter, FIFA to date has contracted with about 14 downtown hotel properties, with more to come, as well as at a number of other hotels all over the metro area.
So this will all be sprawling as well as dense, particularly when it comes to the games at “Kansas City Stadium” and the FanFest to be held on the south lawn of the National World War I Museum and Memorial.
But … that’s the idea.
To showcase the entire region, the smallest metro area among the 16 North American hosts, for all its other obvious jewels beyond the WWI Museum and nearby Union Station.
Like the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, the Harry S. Truman Presidential Library and Museum, the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts and the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum.
And endless barbecue and soccer history, including the pioneering of Lamar Hunt and Angie and Chris Long and Brittany (and now Patrick) Mahomes with the KC Current.
And the National Museum of Toys and Miniatures, the KCK Taco Trail, and the original rules of “basket ball” on display in Lawrence not far from the grave of the game’s inventor, James Naismith.
And so much more.
But nothing will be more memorable than how we make visitors feel.
And how we in turn feel about ourselves from that decades from now.
Because of our history as the sports architecture capital of the world, the Chiefs’ worldwide popularity from winning three of the last five Super Bowls accented by the winsome touch of Mahomes (and the connection with Taylor Swift) and the Current’s historic initiative to create the world’s first stadium purpose-built for a women’s professional team, Kansas City these days perhaps is most recognized internationally through sports.
The World Cup will make for an extension of that point.
But for reasons that extend well beyond sports, per se.
Especially if we ask not just what our city can do for us, but what we can do for our city.