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A Photographic Tour of the World Cup Fan Festival at Lemon Hill

By Kevin Kinkead

Published: Jun 11th, 2026 · 3:18 PM EDT

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Thursday was the public opening of the World Cup Fan Festival at Lemon Hill.

It’s pretty dope, a large area on the backside of the Art Museum with a huge stage for watch parties. The event is free, but you have to register at this link here.

I’ll guide you through the festival grounds one photo at a time. The main entrance is where Sedgley hits Poplar and you come up a hill with activations, food, drink, and a big store on either side of you:

The store is large. It’s got full sections of shirts, hats, jerseys, novelty and kid items, basically everything you could think of. The shirts and hoodies ran anywhere between $50 and $75 bucks and then the USA jerseys I looked at were $129. The gear is really nice, too. It’s colorful and obviously unique to this tournament:

When you get to the top of the hill you see the stage, which is “humongous big.” That’s what Ilya Bryzgalov would say. All of the tournament games are being shown here over the course of the 39 days, starting with Mexico vs. South Africa. Taking a gander at the crowd, it was 99% El Tri fans as it started to fill up:

If you keep circling around from the stage you get to a couple of big fan areas with food, soda, beer, etc. There’s a Michelob area and a Coke area and then some smaller vendors stationed throughout. Among those vendors is CORNHUB:

Then, a little further back from the stage, there are activations where you can kick a soccer ball, test your reflexes, stuff like that. They’re next to a small pitch where you can play freestyle with small goals:

Okay, now some thoughts, in no particular order.

First, it’s a pretty large festival area. There’s plenty to do beyond just sitting there with a drink and watching the game. They used the space well. There are tons of spots for cooling off and getting water and charging your phone and there are port-O-pottis as far as the eye can see in two designated areas. They used the playground that was already on the property for a kids’ area.

The only thing that’s a little tough is that there’s no parking, so you’ll have to take the bus or an uber or walk/bike. You can get in by parking at the Philadelphia Zoo and walking across the bridge at Girard, then coming down the back way. That’s not a horrible walk at all, maybe 10-15 minutes tops. Should be easy for city residents to get in here, but tougher for the suburbanites.

That’s about it. It looks cool. The terrain is a little uneven, considering that it’s Lemon HILL, but you’re not exactly walking up mountains here. I do wonder how well the grass will hold up, especially since it’s hot as balls and this festival is going on for more than a full month. The fields were already pretty beat up and in tough condition before anybody entered.

But anyway, it’s worth checking out at least once, just to say you did it. This is the only time there will ever be a World Cup Fan Festival in Philadelphia.