Amid anti-immigrant tide, KC’s World Cup legacy hinges on being a welcoming host
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- KC2026 expects 650,000 visitors during six World Cup games from June to July 2026.
- Organizers urge local businesses to prepare for diverse cultures and languages.
- Kansas City aims to showcase hospitality amid rising anti-immigrant sentiment.
Considering that for her first 328 days on the job she’d awakened every morning knowing precisely how many days it is to the 2026 FIFA World Cup, KC2026 CEO Pam Kramer is the last person who needed the one-year-out countdown clock unveiled Wednesday at Union Station.
“I have a countdown clock right here,” she said, pointing to her head and smiling … and maybe even registering the seconds ticking as we spoke.
But even if Kramer sometimes feels like she’s “being thrown through time,” she also conveys a reassuring conviction that “we will be ready” for a colossal event that will envelop Kansas City and the region as nothing has before.
While the most essential parts of those plans, particularly transportation, security and other logistics, are being refined before being revealed, let’s assume for argument’s sake that all is proceeding apace, as implied by the experience of those engaged in each aspect of preparation.
(Even without including, alas, such once-hoped-for bold notions as rail to Kansas City International.)
Plus, there’s time to process and scrutinize all that as it becomes better understood in the weeks and months to come. The city will be one of 11 in the U.S. and 16 in North America to play host for an event understood to be followed by billions worldwide.
For now, let’s focus on the meaning of this moment — how imminent this suddenly is — and try to comprehend the scope, scale and magnitude of it all, while also seizing the day.
As the old saying goes, you never get a second chance to make a first impression.
So most of all, this is a great time to pause and appreciate our own opportunities, and even responsibilities, in the months ahead to reiterate who we are and what The Kansas City Spirit is all about.
Especially amid the current presidential administration’s travel ban and immigrant purge.
Kansas City, one of the most welcoming places you’ll ever find, could and should be a beacon that makes the opposite clear:
All are welcome here.
‘Natural, authentic warmth’
While Kramer acknowledged the tensions surging in Los Angeles, she noted that the Trump Administration was in the White House when the World Cup bids were submitted in 2017 and said the administration has been “very supportive.”
Still, the implications of the intensifying rhetoric and militarization of the campaign against immigrants is unclear in the context of the World Cup.
Beyond the matter of international perception over frequent ICE raids targeting not cartels or gangs but Home Depots, restaurants, factories and immigration courts is a purely practical issue.
For instance, Iran is both among the 12 countries whose nationals currently are barred from entering the United States … and also among the nations that have qualified for the World Cup.
Although the travel ban explicitly exempts “any athlete or member of an athletic team,” including coaches and other “necessary” support roles and immediate relatives, it makes no mention of exemptions for fans from those countries.
FIFA and the White House’s FIFA World Cup 2026 Task Force are in contact about such matters, Kramer said.
So her time is spent focused on what KC2026 can control.
And this much she knows: Kansas City won’t need to be anything but itself to embrace the world properly.
“I think we do that naturally here, and I think what we do already will will be so remarkable,” she said, later adding, “That’s the chance we have here, right? … The way we are going to stand out is by the natural, authentic warmth and welcoming nature” of the region.
Like six Super Bowls
Making good on that, though, will require a keener awareness of what’s ahead than perhaps most people are cognizant of yet.
You could liken it to hosting six Super Bowls here, Sporting KC president and CEO Jake Reid said, “but I don’t even think that does it justice.”
Think of the vast implications this way:
Some 650,000 unique visitors — in more ways than one — are expected to pop in on the region during the six-week-plus period revolving around the first of the six games to be played at Arrowhead Stadium on June 16, 2026 (five days after the 48-nation competition commences in Mexico City) and the last: a quarterfinal on July 11.
Given that we’ll have at least seven different national teams playing here in that span, and the prospect of hosting up to three international base camps locally, 10 or more nations could be almost literally planting their flags here during that span.
Assuming their travel is allowed, attached to each will be the accompanying entourage of fans and the eventualities of international business leaders and heads of state.
All part of what Kramer called “a pretty powerful, staggering idea.”
As he considered scenarios for base camps and the quarterfinals, if not earlier, Reid thought about the tens of thousands of Argentinians who traveled to Qatar for the 2022 World Cup.
And he thought about having the usual 10,000 or so World Cup watchers at Power & Light, with another 50,000 at a time at the FIFA Fan Festival on the south lawn of the National World War I Museum and Memorial.
“The amount of fans at the games are one thing,” said Reid, who serves on the KC2026 executive board. “But then the amount of fans in the region here for multiple days is another.”
Especially if one of the most prominent top-ranked FIFA teams selects a base camp here after the draw is announced in December — a possibility Reid believes is realistic because of our central location and Sporting KC’s Compass Minerals National Performance Center, one of three potential base camps in the area.
The ripples of all that potentially will extend to businesses across the region, companies KC2026 is urging to have in place plans to accommodate multiple languages, cultures and customs.
But the translation of the spirit will be left to all of us, including the thousands of volunteers needed to be what Kramer called “our ambassadors to the world.”
If you’ve ever been to a mega-event like this or the Olympics, you know just how true that can be. If not, you’re about to see.
The real legacy
Legacy is a pillar of KC2026’s very purpose. Kramer and Co. will have more to say about that broader endeavor down the road.
But for this to be truly successful, that legacy must go beyond any so-called “sticks and bricks” impact.
It has to eclipse keeping everyone safe and creating a blueprint for regional transportation connectivity — welcome as that ambition of KC2026 is.
The abiding endowment of the World Cup here has to be the way we make the rest of the world feel.
Not in a transactional sense, though synergy toward enduring economic growth would be plenty welcome.
But in a way that makes for its own reward:
Because it’s right and good, reinforces the values that guided Americans for generations and illuminates the better angels of our nature here in Kansas City.
As the clock winds down, that’s what we should be thinking about the most.