Dallas was chosen to host matches following a concerted recruiting effort by the North Texas region.
The Dallas Sports Commission along with players from the Dallas Cowboys and FC Dallas gathered at AT&T Discovery District in downtown Dallas ahead of the announcement. Frisco Mayor Jeff Cheney and city leaders from Dallas, Fort Worth and Arlington also attended.
“I want to thank our regional partners and other mayors for contributing to our success,” Cheney said at the celebration.
The United States is slated to host 60 World Cup matches, with the remaining 20 being split between Canada and Mexico. Other host cities include Atlanta, Houston, Los Angeles, Kansas City, New York City and San Francisco. The Dallas Sports Commission estimates that a host city could yield an economic impact of $400 million and about 3,000 new jobs.
In total, 16 U.S. cities will host the World Cup, and the competition to host one of the world’s largest sporting events has been going on for years. The 2026 tournament will be the first time that the men’s World Cup will take place in North America since 1994.
Representatives from the Dallas Sports Commission, FC Dallas and the Dallas Cowboys will head to New York this weekend to meet with FIFA officials and nail down logistics for the matches, FC Dallas President Dan Hunt said. One of the city’s goals is to host the finals.
“Other big goals are to have as many national teams as possible come use Dallas as their home base,” Hunt said. “We'd love for one to pick Toyota Stadium and Toyota Soccer Center as a home base, but we also have MoneyGram Soccer Park, SMU [and] the Cotton Bowl.”
Hunt added that the Dallas team is aiming to have the International Broadcasting Centre return to its 1994 home of Fair Park.
FIFA representatives toured the Toyota Soccer Center in Frisco in October 2021, leaving city officials hopeful that the DFW region would be chosen to host the matches. The Toyota Stadium is expected to be a live-in training center for competing teams, said Josh Dill, director of sports and events at Visit Frisco.
Officials from Visit Frisco, the city’s marketing arm, also expect the tournament to boost the city’s hotel industry.
Next steps include figuring out how many and what level of matches Dallas will host, although Hunt said he estimates the city will have at least six at AT&T Stadium.
Dallas Cowboys owner and president Jerry Jones said that earning the bid was more significant than a Super Bowl win.
“The longer I'm in sport, the more I realize just how meaningful soccer is to this world,” Jones said. “When we built that stadium, we basically built it with the mind to have great, great events, and it wasn't just American football.”
