Key takeaways:
- The 2026 World Cup will be shaped as much by its host cities as by the matches themselves. Each location is building its own programming around the games through music, food, fashion, landmarks, and fan experiences.
- For rights holders, the most valuable World Cup content may happen beyond the pitch. Fan festivals, city rituals, celebrity moments, and local culture are becoming essential storytelling assets that help audiences feel connected to the tournament.
- AI-powered content creation tech is making local storytelling at scale possible. With activity unfolding simultaneously across 16 cities, automation is enabling rights holders to rapidly create and distribute short-form, multi-format content that captures the atmosphere of every destination.
“The world game is coming to the greatest city in the world, and I’m so thrilled because fans from all over the world will get a chance not only to see some great soccer being played here, but also to enjoy our city at the same time.”
Speaking at an event in SoFi Stadium 30 days before the start of the tournament, NBA legend Earvin “Magic” Johnson urged travellers to make Los Angeles their World Cup destination. He is not the only celebrity to support LA’s role as a host city. The city’s organizing committee has recruited a stable of “community ambassadors,” including Snoop Dogg, Eva Longoria, and Will Ferrell, to help lead the celebration with all the glitz and glamour LA is known for.
One of 16 cities chosen to host the World Cup, Los Angeles has developed a comprehensive plan to engage fans across its neighborhoods. Following the official FIFA Fan Festival at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, 10 fan zones will extend the festivities with a series of watch parties and festivals. Each fan zone, the organizers noted, will reflect the diversity of its surrounding community, featuring food, music, and cultural showcases.
“I’ve been part of a lot of major sports moments throughout my career, and I can honestly say this summer is going to be something special,” said Johnson. “From the matches themselves to the Fan Festival and Fan Zones, Los Angeles is going to deliver an unforgettable experience on and off the pitch.”
When host cities become the story
Delivering fan experiences centered around local culture, say industry experts, has become table stakes in major sporting events. “Host cities often develop an accompanying offer to help reach audiences that are perhaps less interested in the competition itself, or to generate welcoming, convivial settings,” explained David McGillivray, professor of event and digital cultures at the University of the West of Scotland.
These settings are no longer just backdrops to the games; they are integral to the storyline, shaping how the competition is experienced, shared, and remembered. This shift expands opportunities for rights holders: the most compelling stories are not confined only to the 90 minutes on the pitch but also emerge from how host cities define the tournament through their own identity.
Perhaps the best example of this came from the last mega sporting event, the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris. From the opening ceremony on the Seine to using the city’s monuments (Place de la Concorde, the Grand Palais, the Eiffel Tower) as competition venues, the biggest star of the Paris Games was in many ways Paris itself.
To wit: one of the lasting images from Paris 2024 is of the Olympic cauldron rising off the Seine every night. “It was a spiritual moment every night with up to 40,000 people watching this thing in silence,” said Étienne Thobois, chief executive of the games’ organizing committee. “It was the City of Light under the Olympic light. It was almost poetic, and I think very French.”
Where local culture meets global sports
In the 2026 World Cup, 16 cities will be offering a rich, localized canvas for content that resonates far beyond the stadium. One of them is Guadalajara. The largest city in the state of Jalisco, where Tequila originated, Guadalajara is also the birthplace of mariachi music and many other Mexican customs – and it hopes to stand out as Mexico’s beacon of culture during the tournament.
“Guadalajara is the most Mexican host city of the World Cup,” said Pablo Lemus Navarro, the governor of Jalisco. “When we talk about Mexican symbols like mariachi, tequila, and charreada (Mexican rodeo), they all come from Jalisco. We are going to make it the most Mexican World Cup venue.”
Vancouver plans to do the same in British Columbia. In addition to turning the Pacific National Exhibition at Hastings Park into a fan fest of watch parties and concerts, the geodesic dome of Science World, one of the city’s most iconic landmarks, is being transformed to look like Adidas’ official match ball for the World Cup.
“The transformation of Science World is more than a visual transformation,” said Royce Chwin, president and CEO of Destination Vancouver, the city’s official tourism bureau. “This is about creating a globally iconic image that immediately connects Vancouver to the FIFA World Cup and showcases our city’s creativity and ambition.”
From City Streets to Social Feeds
For audiences following from afar, each host city becomes part of the tournament’s story. The sounds echoing through fan festivals, the street food outside stadiums, the colors filling public squares, the rituals unfolding before kickoff – all of it shapes how the World Cup is felt beyond the matches. For rights holders, that turns every moment captured around the event into an opportunity to deepen storytelling and bring fans closer to the atmosphere on the ground.
The challenge, of course, is scale. With matches, fan zones, cultural events, and city-wide celebrations unfolding simultaneously across three countries, AI-powered content creation platforms are becoming essential for turning thousands of moments into a constant stream of local narratives. Because every fan, wherever they are, deserves to experience a little Hollywood glitz and glamour during the biggest sporting event on earth.
Actionable insights:
- Capture fan culture beyond the game: street scenes, music, food, and rituals often outperform traditional match-only storytelling.
- Build content workflows around host-city narratives, not just fixtures, scores, and player performances.
- Use AI-powered automation to publish local short-form content quickly across platforms while tournament attention peaks.
