KC2026: Showcase of What Makes A Host City Amazing (Kansas City, MO, USA – World Cup 2026)
Quite a few people told me that I should head to KC even if I wasn’t going to a match with most saying it was their favorite host city of World Cup 26!
I’ll be honest, as a Denverite, I was a bit salty that we were not hosting and furthermore, KANSAS CITY?! Hmph, that seemed incredulous, preposterous even especially since I had visited Vancouver for my first World Cup 26 match
Welp. Boy o boy was my skepticism misplaced. Here’s what KC did so well (and things that are useful to consider if you are planning a trip around a big sporting event)
QUICK OVERVIEW
KC is a shining example of what happens when a host city does its job exceedingly well. How? By identifying potential pain points and working to minimize or eliminate those in addition to having those involved (shout out to the army of volunteers) create an unbelievably, genuinely warm and welcoming environment.
Host City + Sporting Event Details
- Sporting Event: World Cup 2026
- Host City Info: One of 16 host cities in Canada, Mexico and United States
- Hosted six matches in total; Four Group Stage, One Round of 32 and One Quarterfinal
- Airport: Kansas City International Airport (MCI) 20.6 miles (33.1 km) – 25 minute drive to downtown KC
- Public Transit Score: 25/100 (Walkscore) classifying it as car-dependent
How KC Nailed Their Hosting Gig
MCI: Kansas City International Airport
The World Cup is truly an international event with people traveling from all around the world to attend matches and support their countries/teams and the first place that most travelers will see in a city is the airport.
Small gestures from having a welcome sign be multi-lingual to bigger things to having lots of signage to larger things of having so many volunteers help create a welcoming atmosphere. One of the biggest differences that I noticed wasn’t just that people were there but they were more proactive in engagement and offering support. To top it all off, they were even handing out the cutest scarves when I arrived.
Everyone was SO NICE – lol I was not paying attention to the signs and walked out of the airport in the wrong direction and a volunteer walked me all the way back inside and offered to take me to the waiting area. You could tell that people were really proud that their hometown was hosting and they wanted to show the world how KC deserved that honor.
The bathrooms – this is one of the examples when pain points are taken away seamlessly. First, there are signs outside the entrances letting you know how many stalls are available or occupied. And when you walk in you can look up and tell by the light about the stall, if it is available (green) or occupied (red). PLUS the stalls and doors are wide enough to accommodate you coming into the bathroom with your bags (the joys of solo travel lol!). AND they do away with the American weird bathroom gap and have the doors go from floor to ceiling!)
How KC Nailed the Transportation (What Could Have Been An Issue)
Getting Around
Transportation is one of the logistics that can be a big pain point when you are traveling to attend a large sporting event.
Renting a car can be an option but typically an expensive one with the cost not only for the car and fuel but you’ll need to factor in parking – both at your lodging and if its available, at the sporting event(s). And this isn’t even an option for some travelers.
Personally while I’ve driven in big cities such as New York City or LA and through snow storms in Alberta, Canada and Iceland and drive all the time when I’m home; when I travel, I prefer to not have to be at the wheel.
There’s the options to take a cab or book a ride share but those can also get pricey quickly.
Case in point, if I had taken an Uber to the airport, it would have been $36 (or $45 without my discount) and from the stadium after the match, it would have been $152!
Kansas City Offers ConnectKC26
Literally described as your tournament transportation with free airport transfers (to the FIFA Fan Festival site), stadium transfers for $15 – available from multiple locations (the middle photo) and transportation from other regions around KC (which can help with keeping lodging costs down!).
It was super easy to sign up for the passes and once I got the confirmation email, as easy to add to my Apple wallet!
My Experience: From/to Airport
I waited for maybe 5 minutes at the airport for another bus to come. Another small but thoughtful touch was to have people wait in the air conditioned airport and then head to the lot when a bus had pulled up versus waiting outside in the hot weather. I chatted with a couple of volunteers and it was really cool to encounter such engaging people (and this was nearing the end of a very long tournament)
The buses were clean and comfortable and made for very enjoyable rides.
At the lot near the FIFA Fan Festival, they had a tent up providing shade as you waited for your bus (scheduled for every 15 minutes). Again – small but thoughtful touches such as having you register for a time (you could come earlier or later) but they were anticipating another passenger so they waited a few minutes to give him a chance to catch this bus!
I personally appreciated that the Airport Direct Buses continued until Monday even though the last match hosted in KC was played on Saturday!
My Experience: From/to Stadium
There were over 69,000 people that went to the Quarterfinal match to put my experience in context.
How much time from when I got to the lot at the end of the queue to the moment that I got onto a bus? ONLY 20 minutes!!
I have driven to many, many sporting events + concerts and can sadly tell you of times that I have waited for an hour or more to leave a parking lot! And most of my wait times to even get a ride share at one of these events was longer than that!
How did they get the lines to move so quickly?
There were some signage but mainly lots of volunteers helping to direct people (there were also six pick-up/drop-off points)
Most importantly, there were so many buses to get people transported.
I don’t know if this is what happened only for our match but tickets were checked when you got onto the bus to head to the stadium but not when you were leaving (which makes sense since you bought a round trip ticket). The elimination of that step probably saved 10 – 30 minutes since some other places would check at multiple points in the line.
It took me an hour and ten minutes from leaving the stadium to getting to my hotel room which was thirty minutes less than I waited to get my BofA bracelet!
Downtown Area
Within the downtown KC area, they have a free Streetcar that runs through the main corridor that allows you to easily get around! It did run fairly frequently (maybe every ten minutes)
How Does KC Compare To Other Host Cities
I attended the Paris2024 Olympics as well as another World Cup 26 match in Vancouver and both of those cities had a pre-existing robust public transit system that made travel easy and efficient both to/from the airport and to/from sporting venues.
With ConnectKC26 system and since I stayed within the downtown area, it was as easy, efficient and cost effective to travel around Kansas City as it was in the two other cities!
Activities Outside of the Sporting Event(s)
FIFA Fan Festival
Yes FIFA did mandate that every host city needed to put this on without providing any monetary help (exactly were did those inflated ticket prices go but I digress)
There were scheduled concerts including from some famous artists like Sheryl Crow and All American Rejects the weekend that I was in town.
Lots to do around the Fan Festival from catching tunes to watching one of the other Quarterfinal matches to waiting and getting those social media famous bracelets.
Thoughtful Touches And Incredible Volunteers
I loved how while we were queuing to get into the Fan Festival, the KC Department of Health was handing out free packets of sunscreen as well as electrolytes. The photo of the right shows all the free swag I got and I actually could have gotten a lot more but I hate lines and hit my limit for that bracelet,
The thing that blew me away with KC were the people – it was incredible to meet so many people that really wanted to show their city off to the world and were so excited for us to be there. They represented the city so well and were really were always so nice and helpful. It was really sweet how often I was asked if I wanted someone to take a picture of me when I was taking photos of things and most of the photos were really good when I did say yes (lol if you solo travel, you get me!)
KC blew me away – not only as a host city but just a great city in general as in I am trying to figure out when I can go back!
