The 2026 World Cup kicks off across North America on Thursday, bringing together the largest congregation of national teams ever assembled for the finals.
The 48-team World Cup will take place at 16 venues across the US, Canada and Mexico, with many of them more accustomed to hosting NFL matches.
That means organisers have had to take special care to provide playing surfaces suitable for World Cup football.
Normally, American football is played on artificial or hybrid pitches, which can't be used for football matches at the World Cup for quality and safety reasons. The challenge for Fifa, therefore, is to offer the highest-quality grass pitches.
University of Tennessee and Michigan State University were tasked with perfecting and providing the surface that would be installed and maintained across all 16 venues.
According to the Associated Press, two types of surface will be used for the tournament. Bermuda grass for venues in warmer climates in places like New Jersey, Miami and Guadalajara in Mexico, and rye mixed with Kentucky bluegrass for venues in cooler climates or those indoors. Like the ones in Texas, California, Seattle, Toronto and others.
“Sixteen stadiums across three countries, half of the stadiums don't have natural grass in them ever,” Trey Rogers, a professor of turf grass research at Michigan State University, told NPR.
According to the BBC, plastic fibres similar to those used in artificial turf have been attached to the grass to make the pitches more uniform and durable. When the grass roots reach the plastic, they intertwine, which makes transportation and installation easy.
Apart from the pitch, some reconstruction has also taken place. The MetLife Stadium in New Jersey, which will host this year's final, saw around 1,700 seats removed to accommodate for run-up areas for corner kicks.
According to David Graham, senior pitch manager of Fifa Tournaments Infrastructure, “close to six or seven years” of research have gone into ensuring that the pitches at all 16 World Cup stadiums are in perfect condition, and added that research was helped by observations from the Qatar World Cup.
“Fifa itself, and the pitch management team, is guided by the science to deliver what we need to deliver for match day. So, it’s been quite refreshing and well publicised that this is what we do: we go with the research; it’s what guides our process,” he said.
However, it has not been all smooth sailing. A video of the Senegal team training for their friendly against the US at the Bank of America Stadium in North Carolina caused concerns after the Senegalese players were seen struggling to gauge the bounce of the surface.
While the venue will not host matches at the Word Cup, uncertainty over the state of the playing surfaces across non-traditional football venues in North America remain.
