Kansas City already won its bid to be a 2026 World Cup host city, but the tournament carries additional impact for the area if teams select local venues as base camps for the event.
The 48 teams that will compete in the 2026 World Cup use base camps to train for the event, practice and stay in nearby hotels. FIFA officials also set up a base camp for the World Cup.
Fans often want to stay near their team’s base camps to be close to the action, creating an economic boost to the areas around any venue selected as a base camp, especially if it’s a team with a huge fan base and one more likely to go deep into the tournament.
The Kansas City area has at least six venues hoping to be selected as a base camp.
Compass Minerals National Performance Center
The facility at 1913 Pinnacle Way in Kansas City, Kansas, is the training home of Sporting Kansas City.
The center, which opened in 2018, has five soccer fields, including three side-by-side-by-side fields called a SuperPitch. It has two full-size synthetic turf fields surrounding a two-story coaching pavilion with classrooms, cameras and an observation deck.
It offers a sports performance lab, gymnasium, education center and event spaces. In addition, about a dozen hotels and lots of restaurants and retail are nearby. It’s about a half hour drive to the airport.
Children’s Mercy Park
The Major League Soccer facility is the home to Sporting Kansas City. The soccer-specific stadium, which opened in 2011, has 18,467 seats.
The facility has all the amenities a professional soccer club desires, but it isn’t designed for training and is more likely to be used in combination with nearby Compass Minerals National Performance Center than as a stand-alone training facility.
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