2026 FIFA World Cup Host City Guide: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Over the course of 11 weeks, SportsTravel is delving into each of the 11 U.S. cities that will host matches at the 2026 FIFA World Cup, which will be the largest edition ever of the event after it was expanded from 32 teams to 48. It will also be the first to be staged in three countries — Canada, Mexico and the United States — and 16 host cities in total.

Up next in our series: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, which will host World Cup matches for the first time. Known as the “Birthplace of America” where the Declaration of Independence and Constitution were signed, the “City of Brotherly Love” has its own unique sporting culture and tradition — it has franchises in NFL (Eagles), MLB (Phillies), NBA (76ers), NFL (Flyers) and MLS (Union). Now as it gets set for its World Cup debut — which will include a Round of 16 game exactly 250 years after the signing of the Declaration of Independence happened in this city — we wait to see which teams and players will feel the “love” from the famously difficult Philly fans.

[Editor’s Note: Click here to read the Host Venue Guides for Kansas City, Missouri and Houston]

[For the full list of confirmed base camps so far, click here.]

Stadium

Stadium: Lincoln Financial Field / Philadelphia Stadium

Capacity: 69,000

Opened: 2003

Games: Six matches including:

• Côte d’Ivoire v Ecuador | Group E | Sunday, June 14

• Brazil v Haiti | Group C | Friday, June 19

• France v Bolivia/Iraq/Suriname | Group I | Monday, June 22

• Curaçao v Côte d’Ivoire | Group E | Thursday, June 25

• Croatia v Ghana | Group L | Saturday, June 27

• Match 89 | Round of 16 | Saturday, July 4

Location

Lincoln Financial Field — named Philadelphia Stadium during the World Cup — opened in 2003, replacing the previous Veterans Stadium. It is home to the Philadelphia Eagles, who have won two of the past nine Super Bowls, as well as Temple University’s football team, and is part of the South Philadelphia Sports Complex on Pattison Avenue between 11th and South Darien streets alongside Interstate 95. That complex houses not just the Eagles’ stadium, but also Citizens Bank Park (home of the Phillies) and Xfinity Mobile Arena (home of the 76ers and Flyers).

Team Base Camps

Côte d’Ivoire, also known as Ivory Coast, is the only national team to so far confirm a team base camp training site in Philadelphia for the World Cup. The team will train at Subaru Park, Philadelphia Union’s stadium in nearby Chester, Pennsylvania, and its all-in-one waterfront campus facility includes eight professional-grade training pitches, a dedicated match pitch for their MLS NEXT Pro team, team offices and a high school for academy players.

Its hotel and headquarters will be in Wilmington, Delaware, roughly 20 minutes from Chester, although the exact accommodation has not yet been announced.
Côte d’Ivoire will play two Group E games at Lincoln Financial Field (home to the NFL’s Philadelphia Eagles) in Philadelphia, first on June 14 against Ecuador and then on June 25 against Curaçao, which will be its final group stage match. Their second and middle game against Germany will be played in Toronto on June 20.

Fan Experience and Activations

Philadelphia’s FIFA Fan Festival will operate from Lemon Hill in East Fairmount Park, behind the Philadelphia Museum of Art. According to Philadelphia Soccer 2026 CEO Meg Kane, the Fan Festival will be open for 39 days, including 34 matchdays and five rest days, with events also planned for the rest days across the one million square feet of space provided on Lemon Hill.

It will have a main stage and a live stage in case matches overlap, ensuring that the space can host as many matches as possible. In addition, the Fan Festival will include a family-friendly zone with its own sensory-friendly rooms to ensure that all fans’ needs can be accommodated during the tournament.

Organizers are encouraging fans to walk to the Fan Festival or make use of bikes or public transport, such as the shuttle system, to see more of the city and to be as environmentally friendly as possible.

To prepare the park from a legacy perspective, new sidewalks and ADA accessible ramps have been introduced for the first time.

“The City of Philadelphia is fully committed to making FIFA Fan Festival the heartbeat of our FIFA World Cup experience,” said Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle L. Parker. “We have brought together City agencies, our parks system and local partners to activate Lemon Hill in a way that reflects the best of Philadelphia – welcoming, vibrant and truly for everyone. FIFA Fan Festival is where the city shows up for its residents and the world, and we want every person who walks through those gates to feel the pride and energy that makes Philadelphia unlike any other Host City in North America.”

Elsewhere, Philadelphia Soccer 2026 has partnered with Stateside Live!, a property of Live! Hospitality & Entertainment, to launch a collection of matchday experiences tailored to individual fans, families and visiting supporter groups. The curated experiences for matchday ticketholders include pre-game festivities and after-match parties, as well as premium culinary selections, signature beverages, live musical performances and VIP access.

Accommodation Supply

Philadelphia has a large inventory of hotels and short-term rentals than some of the other U.S. host cities, so demand tends to spread across a wider pool of listings.

According to AirDNA, Ghana vs Croatia on June 27 (+155 percent), Côte d’Ivoire vs Curaçao on June 25 (+131 percent) and France vs Iraq/Bolivia/Suriname on June 22 (+120 percent) are driving the highest demand growth by match bookings in Philadelphia year-over-year at the moment.

In terms of occupancy growth, Philadelphia is currently pacing ahead of Houston by early occupancy. Matches such as Haiti vs Brazil on June 19 (36 percent), the Round-of-16 match on July 4 (33 percent) and Ghana vs Croatia on June 27 (31 percent) are currently the greatest drivers in occupancy growth so far.

As for pricing across the Philadelphia group stage dates, the average available nightly rate currently sits at $383, which is 107 percent higher than at the same time last year. For the Round of 16 match, coinciding with the July 4 celebrations, the average available rate is currently $465, up 146 percent year over year.

As per Key Data, the chart above underlines that Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, is seeing the third highest increase in short-term rental reservations per property (+275 percent), behind only Boston, Massachusetts, and Kansas City, Missouri. Unsurprisingly, the length of stay drops sharply (27 percent) as fans move on to other cities or head home after games. On the hotel side, reservations per room and average daily rates are two of the most consistent and healthy performers across the 11 U.S. host cities, at 45 percent and 38 percent respectively.

And according to CoStar forecasts, the average daily rate in Philadelphia at the time of the FIFA World Cup is ranked in the middle section of the U.S. host cities at $195.67, although this translates to the largest ADR year-on-year growths from 2025, at 0.174 percent, with the city due to host a significant six matches.

Q&A: Meg Kane, Philadelphia Soccer 2026 CEO

What does it mean to you and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to be hosting this year’s FIFA World Cup?

As a native Philadelphian, I take a tremendous amount of pride in the fact that Philadelphia has been chosen as a FIFA World Cup host city. I think it is a hidden gem to the world and it can be seen as somewhere in between Washington D.C. and New York. This is a city that is characterized by its incredible pride and it has a very unique culture to be welcoming, inclusive, passionate, fun and hard-working. In many ways, I see hosting this tournament as one of the ultimate honors that we have earned together, through delivering international and national events, from political conventions to a Papal visit, the NFL draft and now the World Cup. We have demonstrated our excellence but we never want to lose the essential character of Philadelphia, such as our authenticity or our inclusiveness. We

We are one of the nation’s best sports cities and that passion and fandom is something that will create a cross-cultural connection in a way that the team and I are really excited to see.

What are the major opportunities that the tournament will bring?

Philadelphia’s history is really rooted in the immigrant tradition and our soccer story is rooted in exactly the same tradition. Soccer was played here between different cultures from immigrant communities (English, Irish, Italian, Polish etc) and as our immigration pattern and growth has shifted away from European culture towards Africa, the Caribbean nations and South America, we see soccer developing more in North, West and Southwest Philadelphia.

The draw that we have as Philadelphia is in many ways a perfect microcosm of our history and our tradition of soccer to be able to welcome France, Croatia, Côte d’Ivoire, Haiti, Brazil and Curaçao to our city. This is very important and this is something that visitors are going to experience in a unique way in 2026. We encourage people to embrace the neighborhoods around the city because that is where you will find the best restaurants and shops, as well as the outpouring of our diaspora for the World Cup. This is where there is such a unique opportunity for fans to experience Philadelphia.

How is your “How Do You Phan?” campaign designed to connect residents to a once-in-a-generation global moment?

While we are all rooting here in the United States for the U.S. Men’s National Team, the World Cup is one of those few sporting events where we find people also supporting a second team based upon where their family is from or based around their favorite player or kit. We have our die-hard fans here in Philadelphia but we also have many people who are “soccer curious” and who want to be part of this experience but they don’t quite know how. They want to feel informed as they are engaging with the World Cup.

We launched “How Do You Phan?” as a way to introduce the teams that were coming here to our residents, so they could understand their heritage. We love our chants here and our vernacular around sports (e.g. “Go Birds” [in reference to the Eagles] — meaning anything from hello to goodbye, thank you, sorry etc) so we wanted to share everything that a “soccer curious” fan may need to know without picking a team. This is a combination of leaning into the existing Philly culture and marrying that with the teams that are coming, and you will feel that you can root for a team that comes here.

What are some of the logistical / operational challenges that have to be negotiated before and during the tournament?

It is ongoing and every plan that is being built is being built for nimbleness, alacrity and flexibility based upon what we learn and what we know. Every match that we host will inform how we may operate for the next match. Everything is being done to ensure that we can consistently deliver a safe, secure and fun fan experience.

The other piece is that there are a significant number of events happening over the course of the six weeks that the World Cup is happening. We are celebrating our July 4 250th anniversary and we have a July 4 match (Round-of-16) that will obviously bring forth some important, complementary work that we are doing at Philadelphia and will celebrate soccer. We know that the world’s eyes will be on Philadelphia that day and we have this incredible, historic milestone that gives us an incredible opportunity.

As well as this, there are the ongoing safety and security and transportation and mobility requirements. All of these things continue to iterate. We want this to be a safe and secure event and all 11 U.S. host cities are aligned with that with our federal partners, the federal government, the administration — with our state and with our city.

What sort of welcome can fans expect at FIFA Fan Festivals and other activations?

Our FIFA Fan Festival is welcoming the world with a “Philly” flavor and that has been our focus from the beginning. We have chosen to operate our FIFA Fan Festival from Lemon Hill in East Fairmount Park. It is a beautiful parcel of land and it was the first piece of land that the City of Philadelphia acquired to start the park system in the mid-1800s. This is a picturesque, green space that Philadelphia is known for and which is surrounded by 13 dynamic, engaged, diverse neighborhoods. However, the park hasn’t seen much upgrade over the last 40 years and when we went to look for a Fan Festival site, it was a perfect marriage at the recommendation of the City of Philadelphia because it would allow a legacy component for Lemon Hill.

We have had wonderful engagement with our FIFA commercial partners, discussing their builds and what they’re looking to engage on the ground. We have eight official host city supporters of our 10 slots that have been afforded to us by FIFA and we will have a major soccer activation as we want soccer to be at the heart of this celebration.

Do you expect any more team base camps to be confirmed in Philadelphia?

We do not expect another base camp in the Philadelphia region based upon what was submitted to FIFA. Whether another team negotiates a deal elsewhere, we do not have visibility for that. Subaru Park, the home of Philadelphia Union, has been selected as the team base camp for Côte d’Ivoire and that is an elite facility for elite athletes. I know that they received several tours from around the world and that they were very excited to welcome Côte d’Ivoire to Subaru Park.

We don’t expect there to be another base camp but our venue-specific training sites in Philadelphia are Rhodes Field at the University of Pennsylvania and the Jefferson Health Training Complex (formerly NovaCare Complex). The latter is the result of a partnership between Jefferson Health and the Philadelphia Eagles, and it is close to Lincoln Financial Field.