The World Cup is coming back to the Bay Area.
The Bay Area has been selected to be one of the host cities for the 2026 World Cup, FIFA announced Thursday. Matches will be played at Levi's Stadium in Santa Clara.
Games will also be played in 15 other cities across the United States, Mexico and Canada. Some of the other host cities include Seattle, Los Angeles, Mexico City and Vancouver.
Levi’s Stadium, home of the San Francisco 49ers, opened in 2014 and has hosted several major football games since, including the Super Bowl in 2016. The stadium has a capacity of about 71,000 and a grass surface.
"I look forward to our community being the best community, embracing every single team of every single language of every single culture and letting them know that they belong and they are welcome here," local soccer legend Brandi Chastain said.
The 2026 World Cup will be the first to field 48 teams. This year's tournament in Qatar will be the last with the traditional 32-team bracket.
The last time the men's World Cup was held in the United States was 1994, with Stanford Stadium being among the host venues. The 1999 women's World Cup was also played in the Bay Area.
Both competitions left one-of-a-kind memories in the hearts of Bay Area soccer fans, including Michael North, manager at Britannia bar in San Jose.
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North is expecting business to receive a huge boost from the monthlong series of soccer matches coming in 2026, just like it did back in the '90s.
"It can boost it anywhere, on a standard day, depending on who's playing, it could be anywhere from 25 to 50%," he said.
Businesses closest to Levi's Stadium say they get the short end of the stick when there is a big event at the stadium.
"The difficult thing is when they close off the roads, especially for Door Dashers who are also making their own income that way and just for the workers in general and now that we also have construction going on, it creates one big block for us," Jizelle Manalo at Chicken Meets Rice said.
Small businesses in the area are hopeful that traffic routing issues will be fixed by the time the World Cup kicks off.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
