Kansas City is hosting six matches for the 2026 FIFA World Cup. Whether you’re a local, or among the hundreds of thousands of expected visitors, KCUR put together a guide to the games, how to get tickets and what's happening in town.
Leading into the 2026 World Cup, KCUR's podcast A People's History of Kansas City is exploring how we became a soccer city. This project is in collaboration with the Great Game Lab at Arizona State University, which explores how sport connects us to the rest of the world, and the Us@250 Initiative at New America.
See our exhibition "A People’s History of Kansas City Soccer!" at the Kansas City Public Library — Central Branch, on display now through September.
A People's History of Kansas City: How we became a soccer city
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Where are the transportation bottlenecks around Kansas City? MARC is studying how the World Cup is affecting travel, with thousands of extra cars on highways, passengers on buses and streetcars, bikes on trails and pedestrians wandering downtown. -
This year's edition of the FIFA World Cup continues to be thrilling with unexpected performances from tournament first-timers and surprising results from some of the favorites. Among them was Curaçao, the smallest nation to ever quality, which tied Ecuador 0-0 in Kansas City on Saturday. -
Kansas City has welcomed thousands of visitors as the metro enters its second week of the World Cup. But as international crowds come in, many local shop owners feel they're taking a backseat. Some small businesses say the economic boost is not evenly distributed. -
The SpraySeeMO mural festival is marking the World Cup with seven large-scale painting projects in the West Bottoms, which is undergoing a more than $500 million redevelopment. -
One local artist said the city is celebrating "the idea that an artist, with his family and his friends, got together and created some art to welcome these beautiful people. That’s the kind of thing we’re missing in the world.” -
Those big orange cans at FIFA Fan Festival? A Kansas City nonprofit put them there to help deal with organic waste from the massive sporting event.
