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Teams will make final decisions on where to have their base camps after final draw for the World Cup, expected to be held late next year.
FIFA on Thursday added 26 potential base camp locations for the group stage of the 2026 World Cup, including two in Washington.
Renton and Spokane are now on the list of candidate locations, of which there are 49 total so far. FIFA plans to add potential base camps next year, and teams will pick their base camp cities after the men’s World Cup final draw, anticipated for December 2025.
Teams will use the base camp cities to train and rest for their group stage matches. Each city offers a training site and a paired hotel.
Renton’s training site would be the Providence Swedish Performance Center and Clubhouse, the headquarters and training site of the Sounders that features four full-sized training pitches and 50,000 square feet of office space. The facility opened in February. The paired hotel would be the Hyatt Regency Lake Washington at Seattle’s Southport.
In Spokane, teams would train at Gonzaga University. The paired hotel is still to be determined.
Seattle is a host city for the 2026 World Cup, the quadrennial soccer tournament which begins in June 2026 and runs into July. Lumen Field, which holds 68,000 fans, will host four group-stage matches and two knockout-round matches. Although some host cities are also potential base camp cities, such as Houston and Atlanta, Seattle is not.
Forty-eight teams will participate in the 2026 World Cup, with games spread across host cities in Mexico, Canada and the U.S. Teams will know where they are playing their group stage matches after the draw, which will inform their decisions around base camps.
Team USA, Canada and Mexico get automatic bids to the 2026 World Cup as host nations.
The World Cup is regarded as the single biggest sporting event in the world. The 2022 World Cup final had almost 1.5 billion viewers, according to FIFA. By comparison, this year’s Super Bowl drew 123.4 million viewers, according to the NFL.
In October, Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell and SeattleFWC26, the organizing committee for Seattle’s World Cup bid, announced the Seattle Center will serve as an official fan celebration hub for the 2026 World Cup. Seattle Center is expected to host up to 20,000 fans during World Cup matches. SeattleFWC26 plans to announce nine other hubs across Washington in the coming months.
Lumen Field will also host matches for the 2025 Club World Cup, which is a precursor to the World Cup. It features club or franchise teams rather than national teams. The Seattle Sounders will be a participant in the 32-team tournament.
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