Alexandria, Virginia, has been confirmed to host the base camp for the Croatian national team during the 2026 FIFA World Cup in Canada, Mexico and the United States this summer.
The Croatian Football Federation said that Alexandria was its first-choice destination for a base camp after visiting 60 potential venues before and after the 2026 FIFA World Cup Draw in early December. During the tournament, the Croatian squad will stay at Hotel AKA Alexandria, which opened in 2023, and train at the Episcopal High School sports complex.
Featuring 180 rooms along with dedicated spaces for team meetings, dining, recovery and fitness facilities, the hotel is a six-minute drive away from Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport and a 15-minute drive outside of central Washington.
Meanwhile, the training center includes one football pitch, running tracks and cardio equipment, a fully equipped gym and high-level recovery areas with hydrotherapy, cryotherapy, electrical stimulation and ultrasound therapy for the players to optimize their recoveries between matches.
“There are many factors that make a good base camp — training conditions, hotel quality, privacy, location, distance from the airport and overall environment,” Croatia Head Coach Zlatko Dalić told Croatia Week. “Based on everything we saw and heard, Alexandria offered the best combination.”
“The World Cup across such a vast territory will be a major logistical challenge,” added HNS President Marijan Kustić. “However, we have an experienced and well-organised logistics team, and I am confident the national team will have everything it needs — peace, comfort and world-class facilities.”
Croatia will begin their 2026 FIFA World Cup Group L campaign against England in Dallas on June 17, before facing Panama in Toronto on June 23 and Ghana in Philadelphia on June 27. The national team has featured in the final four in the last two editions of the FIFA World Cup after being defeated 4-2 by France in the 2018 final in Russia and beating Morocco 2-1 in the third-place play-off in 2022 in Qatar.
A Milestone FIFA World Cup
The 2026 FIFA World Cup will be the first to feature 48 teams (up from 32 in 2022) across 12 groups and the first to be held across three host countries, making the base camp selection process more complex than at any tournament. The competition will begin on June 11 in Mexico City with a match between Mexico and South Africa, in a repeat of the opening game at the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa.
Germany (Winston-Salem, North Carolina) and France (Boston, Massachusetts) are the other two national teams besides the host countries to formally announce their World Cup base camps so far.
Last week, FIFA reported that more than half a billion ticket requests for the 2026 FIFA World Cup were submitted during the Random Selection Draw ticket sales phase, which ran from December 11, 2025 to January 13, 2026.
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