The announcement is not official, and as much as they want to no one locally can confirm it, but reading between the tweets it sounds as if the biggest sporting event in the world is headed to Jerry World.
According to ESPN soccer/fútbol analyst Herculez Gomez, the 2026 World Cup Final will be played at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas.
This is a rather Hurculean report (sorry; couldn’t resist) that need neither be taken as gospel, nor ignored.
Gomez is a connected figure in the soccer world, and he’s not some DFW shill.
There is something to this. Also, it’s hardly official.
Representatives from Arlington, Fort Worth and the Cowboys did not confirm this report. They all want it to be true.
“We believe that Dallas is the perfect host for the 2026 World Cup,” Dallas Sports Commission Executive Director Monica Paul said in a statement. “FIFA has been an incredible partner every step of the bid process, and we expect a host city announcement in 2023. We’re thrilled that soccer fans across the world are eagerly awaiting word from FIFA.”
This is a FIFA decision, and representatives from the respective cities involved, along with Jerry Jones ‘n’ friends, did make their best sales pitch to host the final.
Jerry is known to be pretty persuasive.
If this report is true, it will be the biggest event in terms of stature held not only at AT&T Stadium, but in Texas. Not in terms of attendance, but in terms of scale a World Cup final would be bigger than anything Texas has hosted.
An announcement such as this normally would be done next year, but ... things change.
Back in June, FIFA announced that DFW was selected as one of the 11 cities to host 2026 World Cup matches. The 2026 World Cup will be held in Mexico, the United States and Canada.
At the time of that announcement, it was not clear which matches AT&T Stadium would host.
Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones said at the time of this announcement that he was confident his stadium would host the World Cup final.
“If you put the stakes out there, I like those kinds of challenges,” Jerry said when the FIFA 2026 announcement was made on June 16. “We want to do everything in our power to have the championship game. In doing so, we will do a great job with whatever games we have there.”
Arlington hosting World Cup matches was a lock.
Arlington hosting the World Cup final was preposterous.
When Jerry expressed his confidence at his second home hosting the World Cup final, a rational person would laugh; Jerry just bein’ Jerry.
When the U.S.-Canada-Mexico bid won to host the 2026 World Cup, the prevailing thought was that the final would go to Los Angeles, or New York City. With the still new SoFi Stadium, L.A. was the front runner.
Other cities in the host 2026 circuit feature a lot of toys to attract major events, but not many can compete with New York or Los Angeles.
When the World Cup was in the U.S. in 1994, the Cotton Bowl hosted a few matches, and the final was played at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, Calif.
A World Cup final at AT&T Stadium would seat more than 90,000, and generate a small fortune in terms of out-of-town revenue.
The World Cup is not an event where it will be Texans giving money to fellow Texans. This is the rare instance when most of the revenue would be generated from out of state, and out of country.
If Arlington does indeed host the event it will do so despite a lack of public transportation; that detail is something international governing sport bodies normally place a premium on when selecting a city.
Arlington is a city of about 400,000, and it has no public transportation. It’s something city leaders, and its citizens, have fought for forever.
It has yet to prevent Arlington from hosting a Super Bowl, NCAA Final Four, NBA All-Star game, or other major events that go through a bid process.
We know for certain that 2026 World Cup matches are coming to AT&T Stadium, and now maybe Jerry did something only Jerry could do - bring the World Cup final in Arlington, Texas.
