Culture

World Cup 2026: The biggest tournament yet and a New York final

Published

2 years ago

February 6, 2024

The United States, Canada and Mexico will host the first 48-team edition of the FIFA World Cup in 2026 — and now we know where all 104 matches in the biggest knockout tournament in soccer history will be taking place.

New York/New Jersey will stage the final on July 19, 2026, beating out early favorites Los Angeles and Dallas to land the showpiece event in men’s global soccer.

The 16 host cities across three countries did not know which matches they would be allocated until Gianni Infantino, president of world governing body FIFA, made the announcements in a live televised show on Sunday, saying the 2026 tournament would be “the biggest spectacle the world has ever seen”.

Where will the three host nations play their group matches?

The U.S. men’s national team, Mexico and Canada have all been granted automatic places at the tournament. The remaining 45 teams still need to qualify.

“There’s going to be 48 countries that are deeply invested in how their team does at the World Cup,” USMNT coach Gregg Berhalter said after the announcement. “It’s going to be a new format and exciting for a lot of people.”

Mexico will kick off in the World Cup’s opening match at Estadio Azteca in Mexico City on Thursday, June 11, then play in Guadalajara on June 18 and then back in Mexico City on June 24.

The USMNT will start in Los Angeles on June 12, then head north to Seattle on June 19 before returning to Los Angeles on June 26.

USMNT’s Christian Pulisic (Howard Smith/ISI Photos/USSF/Getty Images for USSF)

Canada will play their first match in Toronto on Friday, June 12, and then have their second and third group matches in Vancouver on June 18 and 24.

Who were the winners and losers from the announcement?

Well, New York/New Jersey was the big winner, with momentum having appeared to have gathered behind Dallas’ bid to host the final in recent weeks. Dallas, though, can point to hosting the most matches of any city during the tournament.

Overall Dallas Stadium will host the MOST matches out of any host city with 9 @FIFAWorldCup™ matches 🌎
🇺🇸 🇨🇦 🇲🇽 #WeAre26 l #WeAreDallas pic.twitter.com/IxY2rPHi8L
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— FIFA World Cup 26™ Dallas (@FWC26Dallas) February 4, 2024

The United States, as expected, is hosting all the knockout matches from the quarterfinals onwards but the USMNT will have to progress beyond the group stage to have a chance for fans outside of the West Coast to see them play.

Canada’s 10 group stage games will be split down the middle between the two host cities, Toronto and Vancouver. Both cities will also host one last-32 game while Vancouver will play host to a round of 16 game.

Mexico will open the tournament but has only 13 of the 104 matches, and only three knockout matches.

How will it work?

The men’s World Cup has featured 32 teams since 1998 but it’s going large for 2026 with an additional knockout round and 104 matches rather than 64.

The 2026 tournament will feature 12 groups of four teams. The top two sides from each group will advance to the first knockout stage alongside the eight best-performing third-placed sides — 32 teams in total.

From there there will be a round of 16, quarterfinals, semifinals and the final.

The competition will be staged across 16 stadiums, with the U.S. cities New York, Dallas, Miami, Kansas City, Houston, Atlanta, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Seattle, San Francisco and Boston being joined by Mexican venues Mexico City, Monterrey and Guadalajara, alongside Canadian cities Vancouver and Toronto.

GO DEEPER

Everything you need to know about the 2026 World Cup

Who got what?

AT&T Stadium (Dallas)

Capacity (according to bid book): 92,967

Matches: 9

Breakdown: Dallas missed out on the final but did get the most matches of any city — five group-stage matches, two in the round of 32, a last 16 and a semifinal.

The AT&T Stadium will host more matches than any other stadium at the 2026 World Cup (Matthew Ashton – AMA/Getty Images)

MetLife Stadium (New York/New Jersey)

Capacity: 87,157

Matches: 8

Breakdown: Five group matches, a round of 32, a round of 16 and then the one they all wanted… the men’s World Cup final.

GO DEEPER

Who will host the 2026 World Cup final? The pros and cons of Texas and New Jersey

Mercedes-Benz Stadium (Atlanta)

Capacity: 75,000

Matches: 8

Breakdown: Five group-stage matches, a round of 32, a round of 16 and the second semifinal.

SoFi Stadium (Los Angeles)

Capacity: 70,240

Matches: 8

Breakdown: Five group-stage matches, two in the round of 32 and one quarterfinal.

(Ronald Martinez/Getty Images)

Hard Rock Stadium (Miami)

Capacity: 67,518

Matches: 7

Breakdown: Four group-stage matches, a round of 32, a quarterfinal and the third-place playoff.

Gillette Stadium (Boston)

Capacity: 70,000

Matches: 7

Breakdown: Five group-stage matches, a round of 32 and a quarterfinal.

NRG Stadium (Houston)

Capacity: 72,220

Matches: 7

Breakdown: Five group-stage matches, one round of 32 and a round of 16.

BC Place (Vancouver)

Capacity: 54,500

Matches: 7

Breakdown: Five group-stage matches (including two of Canada’s group matches), one round of 32 and a round of 16.

Arrowhead Stadium (Kansas City)

Capacity: 76,640

Matches: 6

Breakdown: Four group-stage matches, one round of 32 and a quarterfinal.

Lumen Field (Seattle)

Capacity: 69,000

Matches: 6

Breakdown: Four group-stage matches, a round of 32 and a round of 16.

BMO Field (Toronto)

Capacity: 45,736 (expanding from current 30,000 for the tournament)

Matches: 6

Breakdown: Five group matches (including co-host Canada’s opening game) and a round of 32

Levi’s Stadium (San Francisco Bay Area)

Capacity: 70,909

Matches: 6

Breakdown: Five group-stage matches and one round of 32.

Lincoln Financial Field (Philadelphia)

Capacity: 69, 328

Matches: 6

Breakdown: Five group-stage matches and a round of 16 on July 4 — the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

Estadio Azteca (Mexico City)

Capacity: 87,523

Matches: 5

Breakdown: The opening match on June 11, featuring co-hosts Mexico; two more group matches, a round of 32 match and a round of 16.

Estadio Akron (Guadalajara)

Capacity: 48,071

Matches: 4

Breakdown: Four group matches only.

Estadio BBVA (Monterrey)

Capacity: 53,460

Matches: 4

Breakdown: Three group-stage matches and a round of 16.

What else do I need to know?

If you like tournament football and you live in North America, you’re in the right place.

The U.S. will host the Copa America in June and July this year, with 16 teams vying to win the final in Miami on July 14.

GO DEEPER

Complete Copa America schedule

(Top photo: Eva Marie Uzcategui – FIFA/FIFA via Getty Images)

Culture

Annotating the Judge’s Decision in the Case of Liam Conejo Ramos, a 5-Year-Old Detained by ICE

Published

11 hours ago

February 3, 2026

Press Room

Annotating the Judge’s Decision in the Case of Liam Conejo Ramos, a 5-Year-Old Detained by ICE

One of the many unsettling images to emerge from the recent ICE surge in Minneapolis was that of 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos, in his blue bunny hat, standing in the January cold with the hand of a federal officer gripping his Spider-Man backpack.

Liam and his father, Adrian Conejo Arias, an asylum seeker from Ecuador, were taken from Minnesota to Texas and held at a detention facility outside San Antonio. Lawyers working on their behalf filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus, an ancient judicial principle forbidding the government from holding anyone in custody without providing a legally tenable reason for doing so. On Saturday, Fred Biery, a federal judge in Texas’ Western District, granted their petition, freeing them.

That’s the boilerplate. But Judge Biery’s decision — which has gotten a lot of attention in legal circles and beyond — is much more than a dry specimen of judicial reasoning. It’s a passionate, erudite and at times mischievous piece of prose.

That may not have surprised some Texas court watchers. Judge Biery, who was appointed to the federal bench by President Bill Clinton in 1994, is known for his wit and writerly flair. His judicial order in a 2013 case involving San Antonio strip clubs is famous for its literary allusions (“to bare, or not to bare”) and its cheeky double entendres. A 2023 profile in San Antonio Lawyer magazine called him “a judge with a little extra to say.”

The extra in this case transforms what might have been a routine decision into a thorough scourging of the Trump administration’s approach to governance. This text isn’t much longer than one of Mr. Trump’s Truth Social posts. In fewer than 500 words, Judge Biery marshals literature, history, folk wisdom and Scripture to challenge the theory of executive power that has defined Trump’s second presidency.

It’s worth looking at how he does it.

OPINION AND ORDER OF THE COURT

Before the Court is the petition of asylum seeker Adrian Conejo Arias and his five-year-old son for protection of the Great Writ of habeas corpus. They seek nothing more than some modicum of due process and the rule of law. The government has responded.

He starts by juxtaposing the grandeur of habeas corpus with the modesty of the father and son’s claims, implying that what makes the writ “Great” is precisely its ability to protect the basic right of ordinary people not to be locked up arbitrarily. It does this by requiring that the government either provide reasons for holding them in custody or else let them go.

Judge Biery’s footnote directing readers to Blackstone’s commentaries and Magna Carta may be intended to give a remedial lesson to members of the administration. His larger point, though, is that to flout the guarantee of habeas corpus — as he insists the current deportation policy has done — is to threaten the integrity of the American constitutional order itself.

The case has its genesis in the ill-conceived and incompetently-implemented government pursuit of daily deportation quotas, apparently even if it requires traumatizing children. This Court and others regularly send undocumented people to prison and orders them deported but do so by proper legal procedures.

He calls attention to the grandiosity and sloppiness of the administration’s position while suggesting that its overreach reflects a more sinister intention.

Apparent also is the government’s ignorance of an American historical document called the Declaration of Independence. Thirty-three-year-old Thomas Jefferson enumerated grievances against a would-be authoritarian king over our nascent nation. Among others were:

1. “He has sent hither Swarms of Officers to harass our People.”

2. “He has excited domestic Insurrection among us.”

3. “For quartering large Bodies of Armed Troops among us.”

4. “He has kept among us, in Times of Peace, Standing Armies without the consent of our Legislatures.”

As the 250th birthday of American independence approaches, the president is being cast as King George III. The federal government’s indifference to habeas claims places it on the wrong side of the historical divide between individual liberty and unchecked state power, and thus at odds with the founding documents of the Republic.

“We the people” are hearing echos of that history.

And then there is that pesky inconvenience called the Fourth Amendment:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and persons or things to be seized.

U.S. CONST. amend. IV.

Civics lesson to the government: Administrative warrants issued by the executive branch to itself do not pass probable cause muster.

In constitutional terms, the judge finds that the administration has defied the Fourth Amendment and disregarded the separation of powers.

That is called the fox guarding the henhouse. The Constitution requires an independent judicial officer.

A barnyard metaphor puts the matter in plainer language: Because executive authority has the potential to be predatory, it needs to be checked by the judiciary branch. Judge Biery might also be sending a sly message to his colleagues on the U.S. Supreme Court, who have looked favorably on many of Mr. Trump’s expansive claims of executive branch power.

Accordingly, the Court finds that the Constitution of these United States trumps this administration’s detention of petitioner Adrian Conejo Arias and his minor son, L.C.R. The Great Writ and release from detention are GRANTED pursuant to the attached Judgment.

The language in which the judge renders his decision also sends a message, in this case to the president himself. Capitalization is a hallmark of Mr. Trump’s style, as it is of American legalese. The paragraph granting the petition bristles with uppercase nouns, which makes it all the more striking that the president’s name, otherwise absent from the ruling, is rendered in lowercase, as a card-table verb.

This may be a subtextual swipe at the president’s ego, but it’s consistent with the decision’s fundamental argument, which is that the president — any president — is ultimately smaller than the law.

Observing human behavior confirms that for some among us, the perfidious lust for unbridled power and the imposition of cruelty in its quest know no bounds and are bereft of human decency. And the rule of law be damned.

For Judge Biery, the case involves procedure, and morality too. When he allows himself to express his disapproval — to write judgmentally, rather than judicially — he is in effect arguing that these principles can’t be separated. Due process and human decency are two sides of the same coin.

Ultimately, Petitioners may, because of the arcane United States immigration system, return to their home country, involuntarily or by self-deportation. But that result should occur through a more orderly and humane policy than currently in place.

Philadelphia, September 17, 1787: “Well, Dr. Franklin, what do we have?” “A republic, if you can keep it.”

With a judicial finger in the constitutional dike,

It is so ORDERED.

Benjamin Franklin famously (and perhaps apocryphally) pointed out the fragility of orderly self-government, while the Dutch boy immortalized in the 19th-century novel “Hans Brinker, or the Silver Skates” did what he could to protect his neighbors from the fury of the unchecked sea.

That Judge Biery puts himself in their company suggests that he sees this decision less as a final judgment than as a warning.

SIGNED this 31st day of January, 2026.

FRED BIERY

UNITED STATES DISTRICT JUDGE

Credit&colon; Bystander

After his cautionary conclusion, the judge still has something extra to say, something that shifts the focus away from the rational, secular domain of jurisprudence.

Below his signature, he attaches the widely seen photograph of Liam. Underneath that — after an eloquently anonymous photo credit — are references to two verses from the New Testament. The judge doesn’t quote them, but they speak for him all the same.

Matthew 19:14

The Matthew verse — “But Jesus said, Suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me: For of such is the kingdom of heaven” — is a well-known statement of compassion and care.

John 11:35

So, in its way, is John 11:35, the shortest verse in the English Bible. It is often quoted when things are so terrible that all other words fail:

“Jesus wept.”

Culture

Try This Quiz on Mysteries Set in American Small Towns

Published

1 day ago

February 2, 2026

Press Room

Try This Quiz on Mysteries Set in American Small Towns

A strong sense of place can deeply influence a story, and in some cases, the setting can even feel like a character itself. This week’s literary geography quiz highlights thriller and mystery novels set in towns around the United States. (Even if you don’t know the book, each question offers a clue about the state.) To play, just make your selection in the multiple-choice list and the correct answer will be revealed. At the end of the quiz, you’ll find links to the books if you’d like to do further reading.

Culture

Try This Quiz on Oscar-Winning Adaptations of Popular Books

Published

1 week ago

January 26, 2026

Press Room

Try This Quiz on Oscar-Winning Adaptations of Popular Books

Welcome to Great Adaptations, the Book Review’s regular multiple-choice quiz about works that have gone on to find new life as movies, television shows, theatrical productions — or even books. With the Academy Award nominations announced last week, this week’s challenge celebrates past Oscar-winning films that were based on books. Just tap or click your answers to the five questions below. And scroll down after you finish the last question for links to the books and their filmed versions.