The World Cup is coming to Gillette in 2026

Updated June 16 at 7:51 p.m.

Boston will be one of 16 host sites for arguably the world's biggest sporting event when the men's World Cup comes to North America in 2026.

Atlanta, Houston, Miami, Philadelphia, Seattle and Kansas City, Missouri, were the newcomers among the 11 U.S. sites picked to host games at the 2026 World Cup, while Baltimore, Cincinnati, Denver, Nashville, Tennessee, and Orlando, Florida, were left out.

Arlington, Texas; East Rutherford, New Jersey; Foxborough, Massachusetts, and Inglewood and Santa Clara, California, were the holdovers.

FIFA announced its selections Thursday for the first World Cup with three co-hosts, also picking three Mexican cities and two in Canada.

The news was met with cheers in a Boston Park Plaza hotel conference room, where the Boston 2026 bid team was hosting a watch party.

Brian Bilello, head of the bid group and president of the New England Revolution, was ecstatic. He pointed to Boston's built-in tourism structure, a venue like Gillette Stadium and a strong soccer fan base as reasons for Boston's selection.

Now comes the hard part: getting the city and region ready for the World Cup.

"For the next four years, it's really about making sure we're ready to host the world," he said. "I mean, this is an event like none other. It's not a stadium event, it's a city event, it's a statewide event. And so making Massachusetts, making Boston ready to host the world is gonna be a big focus. And obviously we'll have a lot of work to do down at the stadium as well and making that stadium ready for the World Cup. We don't know how many games we're gonna get, but we're talking about four or five or six Super Bowls in the span of less than a month. So that's the type of scale we're talking about here."

Martha Sheridan, president and CEO of the Greater Boston Convention and Visitors Bureau, said she expects millions of visitors will come in to the area for the games. She said hotel rooms within a 90-mile radius of Gillette could be filled for almost a month.

But she was confident Boston could adapt to the increased demands.

"We're accustomed to welcoming people to our city, and this will be no different," she said. "We'll have to do some infrastructure work around setting up a large fan fest somewhere in the center of the city, which is another element to this that's very exciting for Boston. ... But I have to tell you, our hospitality community will be absolutely ready for this."

The U.S. selections included none of the nine stadiums used at the 1994 World Cup. The Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California, and Orlando’s Camping World Stadium were the only ones remaining in contention, and they were among the sites dropped in the final round.

New stadiums were selected in five areas used in 1994. AT&T Stadium in Texas replaced Dallas’ Cotton Bowl; SoFi Stadium in Inglewood took over for Pasadena’s Rose Bowl; and Levi’s Stadium instead of Stanford Stadium.

Met Life Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey, and Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Masschusetts, replaced torn-down stadiums that were adjacent, Giants Stadium and Foxboro Stadium.

Orlando’s Camping World was dropped among existing 1994 venues. The Detroit area, where the old Pontiac Silverdome hosted games, was cut in 2018 and Baltimore’s M&T Bank Stadium was dropped after FedEx Field in Landover, Maryland, dropped out. Washington’s RFK Stadium was used in 1994.

Chicago, which hosted the 1994 opener at Solider Field, refused to bid, citing FIFA’s economic demands.

Mexico City’s Estadio Azteca, which hosted the 1970 and ’86 finals and will become the first stadium in three World Cups, was selected along with Guadalajara’s Estadio Akron and Monterrey’s Estadio BBVA.

Toronto’s BMO Field and Vancouver, British Columbia’s B.C. Place were picked while Edmonton, Alberta’s Commonwealth Stadium was dropped.

The bid plan envisioned 60 games in the U.S., including all from the quarterfinals on, and 10 each in Mexico and Canada.

Specific sites for each round will be announced later.

In contrast to the 1992 site announcement during a news conference, the 2026 announcement was made during a televised show from Fox’s studio in Manhattan.

A lot has changed since that last announcement.

Bilello pointed out that Major League Soccer was born following the success of the 1994 men's World Cup in the United States. Now, nearly 30 years since that turning point, he's excited to see what another World Cup on U.S. soil can do for the game.

"What another World Cup is going to do for soccer and do for the Revolution now that we have the World Cup in Boston is just tremendous," he said. "And I think when people look at our sport and see how soccer surpassed some of the other major sports in some of the cities, I think the World Cup's gonna do that. And I think when you think about the sports landscape in Boston today and you think about it in 2027, it's gonna be very different for a lot of people in terms of the stature of soccer and where it sits in the fanbase for Boston and all these great fans we have."

This story was updated with additional comments from the Boston bid group.