2025 FIFA Club World Cup Final to be at MetLife Stadium
Twelve stadiums across United States to be used for 32-team tournament
Posted On: September 28, 2024 By :The 2025 FIFA Club World Cup championship will be played on July 13 at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey, site of the 2026 World Cup final.
Twelve stadiums will be used for the expanded 32-team tournament, FIFA said Saturday night, including five of the 11 U.S. venues for the 2026 World Cup: Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta; MetLife Stadium; Hard Rock Stadium in Miami Gardens, Florida; Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia and Lumen Field in Seattle.
Other sites include the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California, site of the 1994 World Cup final, and Camping World Stadium in Orlando, Florida, another 1994 World Cup site. The additional NFL home is Bank of America Stadium in Charlotte, North Carolina, which doubles as the home for MLS’ Charlotte FC.
The MLS venues are TQL Stadium in Cincinnati; Geodis Park in Nashville, Tennessee; Inter&Co Stadium in Orlando; and Audi Field in Washington, FIFA President Gianni Infantino revealed the sites at the Global Citizen Festival, an anti-poverty group’s event in New York’s Central Park. Global Citizen will produce the 2026 World Cup final halftime show.
The Rose Bowl and Lumen Field are surprises because being on the West Coast, the belief was that FIFA would keep the Club World Cup in the eastern U.S. because the Concacaf Gold Cup in 2025 will overlap the Club World Cup from June 14 through July 6 as well. With the two tournaments overlapping, the tacit agreement between FIFA and Concacaf was believed to be that the Club World Cup would stay on the eastern part of the United States, making its matches timed better for European TV slots, while the Gold Cup will be on mostly the western U.S.
The Rose Bowl, which was surprisingly not included in the stadiums for the 2026 World Cup, is one of the most historic places for soccer in the United States. It has hosted the 1984 Olympic Summer Games gold medal match, the FIFA men’s World Cup Final in 1994 and Women’s World Cup final in 1998 and remains a regular for national team matches.
Lumen Field will have a U.S. national team match among its four group-stage games along with matches in the Round of 32 and Round of 16 in the 2026 World Cup. The stadium is one of the two in the Guardian’s report that do not have a natural-grass field, the other being Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta. The process of putting down a grass surface at Lumen Field in Seattle has already begun, Seattle 2026 Chief Executive Officer Peter Tomozawa said in February.
What is the Club World Cup?
The first edition of the expanded FIFA Club World Cup in the United States will be staged from June 15 to July 13, 2025, with 32 teams from around the world competing the year before the FIFA Men’s World Cup comes to North America.
The tournament will have a group stage of eight groups with four teams per group, the top two progressing to the Round of 16 with a single-match knockout stage throughout the elimination rounds until the final. Europe will have the most club sides involved with 12 participating, while South America will have six, Concacaf will have four along with Africa and Asia and Oceania will have one team participate.
Among those who have already qualified through FIFA’s pathway include the Seattle Sounders of Major League Soccer. Big names from Europe include Real Madrid, Chelsea, Manchester City, Paris Saint-Germain, Bayern Munich, Juventus and Inter Milan.
Why So Late in Announcing Sites?
Part of the reason is because the expanded Club World Cup was not asked for by clubs or, honestly, most European leagues. This has been a point of emphasis from FIFA and as such, given the number of international games already on the calendar, it has faced a backlash.
FIFPRO, the international players’ union, in December criticized FIFA for scheduling an event that “will undercut the rest and recovery time of these players at the end of the 2024-25 season.” It said FIFA’s decision “demonstrates a lack of consideration for the mental and physical health of participating players, as well as a disregard for their personal and family lives.”
For its part, FIFA has been stringent in pushing back against any charges of overworking players. FIFA has not announced any broadcast agreements for the matches. The site announcement was streamed on YouTube. The Athletic reported on Friday that Infantino was on a call with global broadcasters recently in an attempt to stir up interest in the tournament after a media tender released this summer did not raise the interest FIFA was anticipating.
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