A global spotlight will shine on Seattle again as the city learned Thursday it was selected to host FIFA men’s World Cup matches in 2026.

Soccer’s governing body made the announcement during a live broadcast from New York City. Seattle is one of 11 U.S. cities, and 16 total, that will serve as venues for the revamped 48-team tournament that also includes matches in Canada and Mexico.

“We will show that this is a great soccer city; it’s a great international city,” Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell said. “But for me, it goes beyond sports. It has to do with the attitude of the city. We’ll show the world that we have a great attitude here in this city.”

Seattle and Vancouver, B.C., are the only host cities in the Pacific Northwest. The number of games and at what stage of the tournament they’ll be played here are expected to be announced during summer 2023, but it’s likely the Northwest will host two sets of group games with a possibility of one or two knockout-round games, according to the North America bid committee presentation.

Having three countries host the tournament is a first for FIFA. The event, which attracts billions globally, will run in the summer of 2026 with the final slated for July 12.

FIFA’s selection committee visited Seattle last fall to evaluate its potential as a host. A bid committee dubbed SEA 2026 pitched the region and pledged to ensure the site is inclusive around factors like accessibility and sustainability.

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The local committee spent the last five years organizing its bid in part because of what representatives believe will be a large economic boost for Seattle. The North America bid committee estimated the host cities will combine to generate more than $5 billion in short-term economic activity, which could break down to as much as $480 million per city.

Seattle is already a hot tourist destination in the summer and the World Cup could fold into that pre-pandemic uptick, according to Jacob Vigdor, an economist with the University of Washington Evans School of Public Policy who has studied state and local job markets.

Give the city’s passionate soccer fans a big assist for bringing the World Cup to Seattle

The last megasporting event Seattle played a role in was the 1990 Goodwill Games. About 2,300 athletes from 54 countries competed in 21 sports across the state. Funded by Ted Turner, who had already organized an unsuccessful Games in Moscow in 1986, lost $44 million on the 1990 event as expected crowds didn’t arrive, according to HistoryLink.org.

During the broadcast announcing the host cities, FIFA president Gianni Infantino said soccer would be the biggest sport in the U.S. by the time the 2026 World Cup winner was crowned. There was that feeling on Thursday at SEA 2026’s public celebration at Waterfront Park.

Music blared from the stage as hundreds of people mingled, some in soccer jerseys, and dined on free meals from food trucks or played on a mini pitch built by the Sounders. A throng of civic and sporting leaders were in attendance. Gov. Jay Inslee joined King County executive Dow Constantine and Harrell among the speakers.

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“We’ve got some work to do to catch up,” Sounders coach Brian Schmetzer said of the sport eclipsing the NFL in popularity. “It’s certainly going to springboard us into bigger and better things.

“The World Cup, what it did for us in 1994, it launched MLS a couple of years later. The sheer volume of people, money, everything that’s being thrown at this, it’s a really huge event. The Super Bowl is probably the biggest deal in the United States, this will match that, for sure, and then you’ve got that Super Bowl in multiple cities.”

The Sounders announced plans for their first headquarters, at Longacres in Renton, that was office space for Boeing Commercial Airplanes. While the Sounders will retain the original building, land will need to be cleared to build four fields, two with natural grass, with unveiling expected in January 2024.

FIFA requires grass for tournament matches. When the Washington Public Stadium Authority Bill (Referendum 48) passed in 1997 to build what is now Lumen Field, there was a provision that grass be installed. The Sounders play on turf, but the grounds were fitted for grass for the Copa America in 2016 and discussions between stadium officials and FIFA are already underway to seed grass by January 2026 at the earliest.

“The stadium was built for this,” said Zach Hensley, the vice president of operations and general manager of Lumen Field. “There’s a lot of infrastructure changes we’ll be making for FIFA; one will be the natural grass installation.

“We’ll be installing it natively; it will not be installed over turf. There are other specifications that FIFA requires you to do, like buying grow lights and other infrastructure underneath the grass. It’s a big process. And most likely there is some time leading up to World Cup that there will not be able to be any activity on that, we’re not sure exactly what those times are right now.”

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Hensley is part of a five-person group traveling to New York this weekend to meet with FIFA and the other 2026 World Cup host cities.

The next public event will be a FanFest at Pier 62 and viewing parties for the Qatar World Cup.

“There’s no exhale,” said Maya Mendoza-Exstrom, the Sounders external affairs chief operating officer, who will make the trip to New York. “The cool thing is it’s the same people at the table. This sports community, this business community and the government leads, we’re all working on these things, so we don’t have to reinvent the wheel.”

Seattle wasn’t selected when the World Cup was last held in the U.S. in 1994. Nearly three decades later, the 2026 event will be the biggest sporting event Seattle has hosted.

Seattle hosted five NCAA men’s Final Fours, the first in 1949. The NBA (1974, 1987), WNBA (2017) and MLB (1979, 2001) held their All-Star Games in the city while the Special Olympics USA Games were held in Seattle in 2018. Regionally, the 1998 PGA Championship was at the Sahalee Country Club in Sammamish, the 2002 NEC World Championship at Sahalee and the 2015 U.S. Open at Chambers Bay at University Place.  

“In ’94, we just weren’t quite there as a city to host,” Sounders majority owner Adrian Hanauer said. “But, 28 years has changed this city a lot. The industry and the arts and the infrastructure and the thought leadership — there are so many areas where this area has become a leader nationwide, North America and globally in some cases, not to mention an unbelievable soccer city.

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“All of that together, in retrospect made this [World Cup selection] a no-brainer, but it definitely didn’t feel like a no-brainer at 2:14 p.m. when I was watching it on TV.”

Hanauer, a Seattle native who grew up playing soccer, was emotional once he saw “Seattle” on the screen, proclaiming it a host city.

“It was nerve-wracking and emotional,” Hanauer said. “I walked downstairs with tears coming down and my girlfriend said, ‘are your allergies bothering you?’ No, 20 years of working toward this — no, I’m emotional.”