Football Ground Map
Football Ground Map
So MetLife didn't get the most games. That's the first thing that jumped out when FIFA published the full schedule. The final's there on July 19, fine, but it only hosts eight matches. Dallas and Atlanta each got nine. And if you've been checking https://1xbet.ie/en/line/football/2708736-world-cup-2026 for early prices, this probably wasn't on your radar at all. It should be. Dallas and Atlanta are both domes with temporary grass that's going to take a beating across five weeks. By semifinal time those pitches will have seen seven, eight games already. That matters if you're trying to price up anything in the knockout rounds.
Jerry Jones' AT&T Stadium got the biggest slice. Nine matches, 94,000 seats (largest in the tournament), one semifinal on July 14. The Cowboys normally play on FieldTurf. FIFA won't have that, never has, so a crew had to grow grass offsite, truck it in, and roll it over the top on six inches of sand. Jones told reporters he's switching straight back to artificial once the tournament wraps up. Fair enough. It's his stadium.
Mercedes-Benz in Atlanta picked up the other semifinal (July 15) along with five group games, a Round of 32, and a Round of 16. Same deal. Dome, temporary pitch, grass that was basically built from scratch and won't last past August. Nine professional matches on a surface like that is a lot. Players slide, they tackle, they plant and twist. You don't need to be a groundsman to figure out what happens to a temporary pitch after five weeks of that.
| Stadium | City | Capacity | Total Matches | Highest Stage |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| AT&T Stadium | Dallas | 94,000 | 9 | Semifinal |
| Mercedes-Benz Stadium | Atlanta | 75,000 | 9 | Semifinal |
| MetLife Stadium | East Rutherford | 87,500 | 8 | Final |
| SoFi Stadium | Los Angeles | 70,000 | 8 | Quarterfinal |
| Gillette Stadium | Boston | 65,000 | 7 | Quarterfinal |
| NRG Stadium | Houston | 72,000 | 7 | Round of 16 |
| Hard Rock Stadium | Miami | 65,000 | 7 | Quarterfinal |
Eight of the 11 stadiums normally use artificial turf. FIFA ripped up all of them. They've never allowed a match on synthetic grass and they weren't about to start now. The full list of 16 venues on FIFA's site shows the scale of the conversion project. Michigan State's turf scientists spent years on this, trying to work out how you grow real grass inside a dome where sunlight barely reaches the pitch. What they came up with is a layered thing. Sand over the artificial base, then hybrid Kentucky bluegrass and perennial ryegrass on top, all of it shipped in refrigerated trucks from Washington state.
SoFi Stadium tested it last March for the CONCACAF Nations League and players said it felt fine. But that was three games. Not nine. Remember what MetLife looked like during the Copa América Centenario final in 2016? Divots, bare patches, looked dreadful on TV. FIFA says they've sorted it. The quarterfinals will tell you if that's true or not, because by then the Dallas and Atlanta surfaces will have had seven or eight games' worth of studs ripping into them.
Estadio Azteca sits at 2,240 metres above sea level. Guadalajara's Akron is at 1,566. Monterrey's BBVA, 540. Teams flying in from the coast don't always handle that well, and bookmakers have been historically lazy about pricing altitude properly during group stages.
And then there's Toronto. BMO Field is the smallest ground at 45,000, up from about 23,000 after they spent $157.9 million on a renovation. Stands practically on top of the pitch. You can hear the players from ten rows back. Grounds like that tend to produce scrappier football, more fouls, more stoppages. If you fancy unders or set-piece markets at any point during the group stage, check which games landed at the smaller venues before you put anything down.
All good things have to come to an end, and the same unfortunately has to be said for football stadiums too. This article looks at the grounds which are soon to host their last match, the stadiums whose days are numbered and where fans will be watching their football from next.
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