Philadelphia Launches Bid to Host 2026 World Cup Games
The summer of 2026 should be a good one.
Yeah, it’s a long way away, but we’re talking about America’s 250th birthday. We’ve got the Major League Baseball All-Star Game in town and the PGA Championship is coming back to Aronimink. We might get a World Cup game, too.
Today Philly launched its official bid to be a host city for 2026, the World Cup tournament that will be played in Canada, Mexico, and the United States. There are 23 cities interested in hosting right now, which will be ultimately narrowed down to 16 total, including 10 in the USA, three in Canada, and three in Mexico.
Here’s our competition, with my notes in parentheses explaining why Philly is a better choice:
- Atlanta (basically just a big suburb)
- Baltimore (small beans town, not big enough)
- Boston (disgusting sports fans, disgusting sports teams, losers everywhere)
- Cincinnati (whatever city)
- Dallas (home of the Cowboys)
- Denver (great city, bad altitude for 90 minutes of running)
- Houston (too hot)
- Kansas City (too boring)
- Los Angeles (horrible traffic)
- Miami (people more concerned about night life)
- Nashville (people more concerned about country music)
- New York/New Jersey (armpit of America, home of Giants and Jets)
- Orlando (can’t be taken seriously as a sports town)
- Philadelphia
- San Francisco Bay Area (too expensive)
- Seattle (too many hippies)
- Washington, D.C. (too many politicians)
Clearly, Philadelphia is an easy choice to host a 2026 World Cup game. If we lose out to some shit town like Cincy or Baltimore, we riot.
Some details of the bid, via the official campaign website, after the jump:
- the game(s) would be played at Lincoln Financial Field
- organizers describe Philly as a “walkable city with excellent public transit”
- they list successful past events that were hosted here, including the Eagles Super Bowl Parade, Copa America Centenario, Democratic National Convention, and CONCACAF Gold Cup
- Philly remains the country’s 4th-biggest media market
- we’re home to Comcast and Telemundo
Sounds good to me. Let’s fucking go.
There’s no denying that Philly has the best fans. For our country’s 250th birthday celebration, we want to host the 2026 FIFA World Cup here in Philadelphia—our nation’s birthplace! Support our efforts ➡️ https://t.co/1KJKYx2gVg #BringItPHL pic.twitter.com/BQeCuFtHnD
— Mayor Cherelle L. Parker (@PhillyMayor) June 24, 2019