Inside the Bid to Host the 2026 World Cup in North America

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With nine pavilions and a convention hall, Moscow's sprawling Expocentre is among the world's largest conference centers. It rises from the Krasnopresnenskaya Embankment on the north side of the Moscow River, in the shadow of the futuristic skyscrapers that make up the city's modern business district. It was inside the complex's thick concrete walls, on a sunny summer day eight years ago, that the direction of US soccer changed forever.

Hours before the 2018 World Cup would kick off in Russia, FIFA president Gianni Infantino presided over the organization's 68th Congress, where the main order of business was picking a host for the 2026 tournament. The ballot held just two choices: Morocco, bidding for the World Cup for the fifth time; and a joint bid from the United States, Mexico, and Canada, which marked the first time three countries offered to share host duties.

It seemed like a no-brainer. The 2026 tournament, with 48 teams, would be the most complex sporting event in history. Although the North American bid was unique in both size and scope, the resources, infrastructure, and logistical know-how in the three countries, which had combined to host six men's and women's World Cups in the past, dwarfed that of Morocco, which had no existing stadiums that met tournament specifications.

But as representatives of the 206 FIFA federations (the national groups that organize soccer in their respective countries) that had a vote filed into the hall that morning, the outcome was still in doubt.

"Even the night before, we never believed we had this locked up," said Carlos Cordeiro, then the newly-minted president of the US Soccer Federation and a co-chair of the United Bid committee.

The Americans had been here before. In 2010, the US was confident it had done enough to win the right to host the 2022 World Cup, only to lose to Qatar in a process marred by allegations of bribery and fraud. For Sunil Gulati, the US Soccer president who had put so much into that bid, it was a crushing setback.

A New Kind of Soccer Team

"Right after Qatar was selected, a lot of things go through your head," Gulati said years later. "One is I never want to go through this process again. And two is, let's start [over] right now."

It took him a while to get to number two. But by 2015, due to corruption inside FIFA, president Sepp Blatter was forced to resign and Infantino, his successor, changed the way it approved World Cup bids, going to a transparent public ballot in which every country would vote electronically. Convinced the process would be fair this time, Gulati and US Soccer prepared to bid again. But so did Mexico and Canada. Worried the three countries would divide votes that would cost North America the tournament, back-channel talks began about sharing the event.

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Alan Rothenberg, the man behind the 1994 World Cup, the first to be played in the US, said recently of Gulati's diplomacy that "he realized Canada and Mexico were going to be bidding. And even though he didn't think either of them really could do the full tournament, he was worried about everybody fighting with each other. So he convinced Canada and Mexico to join him."

On April 10, 2017, the United Bid was officially announced at the New York's One World Observatory, on the 102nd floor of the tallest building on the continent.

The lack of subtlety was the point. The United Bid had announced its presence with authority and the document that supported it would run to more than 70,000 pages.

Yet in many ways, it was far from a done deal.

Let the Negotiations Begin!

Ten months after United Bid's auspicious start, the whole plan suffered what appeared to be a fatal blow . . . yet it may ultimately have been the thing that saved the effort from ruin.

In the wake of the US national team's failure to qualify for the 2018 World Cup, coach Bruce Arena and his staff resigned. Seven weeks later Gulati also fell on his sword, announcing that he would not seek a fourth term as US Soccer president. That cleared the way for Cordeiro, Gulati's vice-president, to win the presidency at the organization's general meeting in February 2018.

Cordeiro, a Harvard graduate and former Goldman-Sachs investment banker, had worked with Gulati on the ill-fated 2010 effort. He was well-suited to head a World Cup bid. Born in Bombay (now Mumbai) to a Colombian mother and Luso-Indian father, he moved to Miami Beach, one of the most diverse cities in America, when he was 15. Years later, he took over US Soccer at a delicate time, with the vote to award the 2026 tournament just four months away. In his first international trip as president, he traveled to the UEFA Congress in Slovakia.

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The visit was intended to shore up the United Bid with some of the 55 European federation presidents in attendance. But after just a few conversations, Cordeiro began to realize the bid may not have the support he assumed it did. The alarms got even louder on the second day of the trip when ESPN published a story that said high-ranking FIFA executives believed Morocco was polling ahead of the United Bid and would win the 2026 World Cup.

Morocco, which needed just 104 votes to do that, had the backing of much of Asia and South America, as well as its home continent of Africa, the unnamed FIFA executives told ESPN. As a Muslim-majority nation, Morocco figured to sweep the Middle East, too. And France, Cordeiro learned, was not only voting for Morocco, a former French protectorate, it was bringing several other former colonial powers-Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands-with it.

"These guys were super, super organized," a former U.S. official said of Morocco. "This was Morocco's fifth bid but this was their most serious attempt. They had lots of friends everywhere."

The United Bid? Not so much. And time was running out.

So the bid committee reorganized. Less than 24 hours after Cordeiro had landed in Slovakia, the federation presidents of the three United Bid countries - Cordeiro, Canada's Steven Reed, and Decio de Maria of Mexico-were elevated to co-chairs.

The change was necessary, both strategically and practically. Strategically because the old approach was seen in much of the world as a US-led effort, so it was decided power should be shared equally among the three federations. The United Bid, for the first time, truly looked united. It was necessary practically because the committee believed the best way to make up its possible votes deficit to Morocco was to meet in person with representatives of each of the 207 FIFA federations that would be voting in Moscow, from Albania and Andorra to Zambia and Zimbabwe. With just 100 days left that would be impossible for one person. But with three separate delegations-each with representatives from the US, Canada and Mexico-traveling to locations in Europe, Asia, Oceania, and South America-the sprint to the end, while still challenging, was suddenly manageable.

"We learned from our errors that we had to be more inclusive. We couldn't possibly do it ourselves anyway," a former USSF official said this winter. "Had we gone it alone, Morocco might have won because they had the world's sympathy."

So the United Bid committee set up shop at Fraser Suites, an extended-stay apartment hotel in London. A staff of about a dozen would schedule meetings with various federation representatives and each night the three co-chairs and their traveling parties would call in to find out where they were going next. On Friday, everyone would return to London to do laundry and share notes before heading out again on Sunday night.

Life on the Road

The plan was audacious and the logistics frequently daunting. Cordeiro, 69, now a senior advisor to Infantino, the FIFA president, as well as to the White House Task Force on the 2026 World Cup, remembers being in Hong Kong and getting a message that he had to be in Saudi Arabia the next day. A direct flight would take 11 hours but he was routed through Dubai, making the trip a tortuously long one.

Another time a United Bid delegation arrived in an unnamed Eastern European country only to find they needed visas to leave the airport. So they made their presentation to that country's federation on an airport concourse. Despite the challenges, the United Bid couldn't afford to leave any stone, no matter how small, unturned. Under FIFA rules, the vote of each member federation counts equally, giving Gabon and Grenada as much power as Germany.

Nor could the United Bid delegations afford to appear ungracious visitors when their hosts offered to proudly show them a small aspect of their country, whether it was dinner, lunch, or a tour of their federation's training center (visits that provided US Soccer representatives with insights that informed the construction of their own national training center years later).

"I spent close to 20 years in Asia when I was a banker and so I had traveled to all of these countries in my prior life," Cordeiro said. "I was familiar with the culture. For me it was a little bit like, not going home, but it was not completely exotic."

After dinner during the Asian confederation meeting in Kuala Lampur, one federation invited the United Bid delegation to spend some time together and eventually try a few karaoke songs. In Saudi Arabia, the delegation was invited to the King's Cup final between Al-Ittihad and Al-Faisaly. In Latvia, there was a traditional dinner in a heated winter garden in the city square.

The pitch was simple. The stadiums and other infrastructure such as airports, public transportation, and hotels, already existed in the United Bid countries and were all up to FIFA specifications. Morocco would have to invest billions in construction to host the tournament. But arguably the biggest selling point was revenue. A World Cup in North America, the three co-chairs emphasized, could generate as much as $14 billion, money that would be used to fund soccer programs in every FIFA member state. (The United Bid's math, done nine years ago, has proven surprisingly accurate, with FIFA projecting last fall that the four-year World Cup cycle will bring in between $11 and $13 billion.)

Still, the pitch didn't always work, sometimes due to being late in explaining the United Bid in detail. Morocco had a head start in building relationships and sharing its vision.

Neil Buethe, US Soccer's former chief communications officer, traveled with the delegation led by Cordeiro on every trip during the four months. Buethe remembers a cordial visit with the Turkish federation in late May, just weeks before the vote.

"They were great hosts, unbelievable," he said. "But they said to us, ‘Hey you guys have a great bid. It's probably the best bid. But we already told Morocco we're voting for them.'"

And they did.

Buethe said the United Bid had a similar experience in Oman.

"They hosted us incredibly well-traditional dinner, real hospitality, the kind of visit that makes you feel like you've really connected with them," he said. "Then after the vote, I ran into the federation representative on the floor of the convention center. He came over, shook my hand, and he was almost apologetic. I had assumed they voted for us but in that moment I realized they hadn't.

"We understood there were a lot of reasons why a federation might go the other way. You're not going to get every vote. What mattered was the relationships you developed along the journey. Even though Oman didn't support us on the ballot, we stayed in touch and built a great connection-and that can be important down the road."

But as the process continued, the dominoes seemed to be falling in favor of the United Bid, though the three co-chairs refused to take anything for granted even as the FIFA delegates filed into the Expocentre on the day of the vote.

"We were somewhat scarred from our prior experience bidding for a World Cup," Cordeiro said. "You couldn't take anything as a given. We had been well received, and members were interested in what we had to say. However, we were never, ever so confident, particularly the night before. Because you just never know."

Victory . . . and Hard Work Ahead

In the end it wasn't close. The voters overwhelmingly backed the United 2026 bid, 134 to 65. A grinning Cordeiro, flanked by Mexico's De Maria and FIFA president Gianna Infantino, posed for photos on an ersatz soccer pitch rolled out on a stage at convention center. Well to his right, almost out of the picture, were CONCACAF president Victor Montagliani, head of the Canadian federation when the United Bid was launched, and Gulati, who would serve on the FIFA Council through 2021.

(Don't feel bad for Morocco. Although it failed to land the World Cup the first five times it bid for the tournament, the sixth try proved the charm. In 2024, Morocco was chosen as one of six countries-along with Spain, Portugal, Argentina, Paraguay, and Uruguay-from three confederations that will host the 2030 Men's World Cup.)

Both the Canadian and Mexican federations have gone through four presidents since 2018; in the US, Cordeiro has been replaced by Cindy Parlow Cone, a former World Cup champion and the federation's first female head. If the three United Bid co-chairs had done the heavy lifting necessary to land the World Cup, the tasks of organizing and running the largest tournament in history fell to the new leaders.

Together with FIFA, they sorted through 41 potential host cities before winnowing the number to 23, then 16 final host cities, organizing them by geography rather than country. While working closely with the host countries, FIFA is running all aspects of the tournament, which will be the first to include 48 teams. With 78 games to be played in the US and 26 in Mexico and Canada, the 104 total matches are the most ever.

FIFA, which has always played men's World Cup games on grass, has worked with the eight tournament venues that usually have artificial surfaces to come up with a way to install temporary-and expensive-grass carpets that could stand up to as many as nine games in less than a month.

Another problem was the weather. The World Cup in Qatar had been played in air-conditioned stadiums; that wasn't an option in North America, despite forecasts predicting the same kind of withering heat and humidity that plagued last summer's US-based Club World Cup. So FIFA has mandated three-minute hydration breaks midway through each half. (That will also give broadcasters an additional six minutes of commercial breaks while effectively dividing each match into four quarters rather than two halves.)

MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey, was chosen to host the final, with FIFA bypassing larger, more modern stadiums in Los Angeles and suburban Dallas, in part because a mid-afternoon kickoff in New Jersey equates to 9 p.m. in central Europe. But that wasn't the only reason. Civic and political leaders on both sides of the Hudson River spent seven years selling metro New York as the world's most important media, business and entertainment center. It had a diverse population, existing infrastructure and a rich soccer heritage, dating to Pelé's days with the New York Cosmos of the NASL.

Also, it's New York. Well, New Jersey really.

Whatever you call it, though, it will be the center of the sporting universe this July, all because a group of a dozen soccer visionaries from three countries were able to convince the rest of the planet they could put on the best World Cup in history.

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This story was originally published May 22, 2026 at 8:00 AM.