North American 2026 World Cup bid has 23 candidate cities
TORONTO — The North American bid for the 2026 World Cup includes 23 candidate host cities, including Edmonton, Montreal and Toronto.
FIFA will select up to 16 host cities from the list of 23 if the so-called unified bid gets the nod over Morocco at the FIFA Congress in June.
The potential host cities were announced in advance of the final bid submission from Canada, Mexico and the U.S., to be submitted Friday to the world governing body of soccer in Zurich.
Vancouver dropped off the list at the last minute, as did Chicago over concerns about FIFA’s demands.
The unified bid plan calls for 10 matches in each of Canada and Mexico with 60 of the 80 games in the new expanded 48-team tournament format to be held in the U.S.
The American candidate cities are Atlanta, Baltimore, Boston, Cincinnati, Dallas, Denver, Houston, Kansas City, Los Angeles, Miami, Nashville, New York/New Jersey, Orlando, Philadelphia, San Francisco Bay Area, Seattle and Washington D.C.
The Mexico candidate cities are Guadalajara, Mexico City and Monterrey.
The new competition format will feature 16 groups of three with the top two from each pool advancing to a 32-team knockout. The tournament time period will remain at 32 days.
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