World Cup 2026: Argentina could pick Dallas for a base camp

DALLAS - Now that FIFA has announced which teams will play World Cup 2026 matches in North Texas, a big question that remains is whether any of those teams will make North Texas their primary base camp. 

World Cup Base Camp Locations

ARLINGTON, TEXAS - APRIL 01: An aerial drone view of AT&T Stadium (Photo by Tom Pennington/Getty Images)

What we know:

Nine matches will be played at AT&T Stadium, which will be renamed Dallas Stadium for the tournament.

The countries expected to play here during the group stage include England, the Netherlands, and Japan. But most of the attention is on Argentina. That’s the soccer team superstar Lionel Messi will be playing for.

North Texas will also have five primary base camp locations for teams, and many fans are hoping Argentina will be one of those teams.

The North Texas FIFA World Cup Organizing Committee is also hopeful.

"Argentina base camps, no decisions have been made at this point," said Dan Hunt, the FC Dallas president.

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Dig deeper:

According to the committee, teams won’t pick their base camps until early spring.

Typically, one of the deciding factors is whether the host city can fulfill the national soccer team’s requests.

"Every national team has a different request, and for those that don’t know, the national teams pick in order of their own global ranking. So, Spain and Argentina will go first, and then they go from there. So, working with each of them to see if we can fulfill what they want is probably our biggest immediate challenge," Hunt said. "We hope that we don’t just fill them, but we fill them with global powerhouses."

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What's next:

One of the next things the committee must accomplish ahead of the World Cup is growing grass within two months in AT&T Stadium.

"And that will include not just the grass install, but there’s some lighting, widening of the pitch area in the corners, like a lot of NFL stadiums have had to do. So there’s a construction project to go into the corners and remove some of our field suit areas to expand the surface. I don’t know the exact date of the pitch install itself, but only much closer to the games," said Chad Estis with the Dallas Sports Commission.