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Lincoln Financial Field will host eight games of the 2025 FIFA Club World Cup, including a Fourth of July match of the tune-up tournament for the 2026 World Cup, soccer’s governing body revealed on Saturday.
The 2025 event is a competition for the world’s top club teams, showcasing the best talent from domestic leagues globally. The 2026 tournament involves national teams.
Next year’s club tournament will run from June 14 to July 13, with the final at New Jersey’s MetLife Stadium, where the World Cup final will be held a year later on July 19, 2026. The opening game will be between Lionel Messi’s Inter Miami and Egyptian team Al Ahly at Miami’s Hard Rock Stadium.
The 63 games will air free on DAZN’s streaming platform. Tickets will be available from Thursday, Dec. 19 on FIFA’s website.
Here are the Linc’s games:
Group Stage
June 16 at 9 p.m.: Group D – Flamengo (Brazil) vs. Espérance Sportive de Tunis (Tunisia)
June 18 at noon: Group G – Manchester City (England) vs. Wydad AC (Morocco)
June 20 at 2 p.m.: Group D – Flamengo (Brazil) vs. Chelsea (England)
June 22 at noon: Group G – Juventus (Italy) vs. Wydad AC
June 24 at 9 p.m.: Group D – Espérance Sportive de Tunis vs. Chelsea
June 26 at 9 p.m.: Group H – Red Bull Salzburg (Austria) vs. Real Madrid (Spain)
Knockout rounds
June 28 at noon: Round-of-16 game
July 4 at 9 p.m.: Quarterfinal game
Philly’s Fourth of July game — which will serve as a good measure of how 2026’s will run — is one of two quarterfinals that day. Orlando’s Camping World Stadium will stage the first game at 3 p.m.
Some of the teams have played at the Linc previously. Chelsea has played a few preseason games there, most recently in the first-ever English Premier League Summer Series in 2023. Manchester City and Real Madrid’s biggest rivals, Manchester United and Barcelona, were actually the first ticketed game ever at the Linc back in August 2003.
Along with South Philly, East Rutherford, N.J., and Miami, games will also be played at the following venues:
Here is the schedule in full:
The tournament to determine the best club team in the world will be the first edition of the new tournament format, which switches from annual to quadrennial and greatly expands the number of teams to 32 from the last edition’s seven.
It replaces the now-defunct Confederations Cup as the warmup competition for the 2026 World Cup, in which Philly will host five group games and a round-of-16 match on the Fourth of July, as part of an expanded, three-continent tournament.
All of 2026’s games coincide with Philly and the nation’s semiquincentennial celebrations. Along with the World Cup, the city (and its suburbs) will host other sporting events that year including the MLB All-Star Game at Citizens Bank Park, golf’s U.S. Amateur Championship in Gladwyne, and the 108th PGA Championship at Delaware County’s Aronimink Golf Club in July, as well as first- and second-round games of the NCAA men’s basketball tournament earlier in the year.
The expanded tournament has drawn plenty of criticism about how it adds to the already congested calendars for the players in these leagues. Players unions and leagues have filed legal complaints against FIFA over the tournament’s scheduling, and many have voiced concerns about player’s wellbeing.
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The Philadelphia Union did not get into this edition of the tournament. The United States will be represented by the Seattle Sounders, which got in by winning the 2022 CONCACAF Champions League, and Lionel Messi’s Inter Miami, which won this season’s Supporters’ Shield, but was selected by FIFA in the host slot. The full group draw in Miami on Thursday came out as follows:
Group A
Group B
Group C
Group D
Group E
Group F
Group G
Group H
Nick Kariuki is Billy Penn’s trending news reporter. A graduate of the University of Virginia and Medill’s MSJ program at Northwestern University, Nick was previously a sportswriter for outlets such… More by Nick Kariuki
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