From June 11 through July 19, soccer fans from all over the world came to the U.S., Canada and Mexico to cheer on their country in FIFA World Cup 2026™. In the U.S., 11 cities hosted matches, with two cities hosting in Canada and three in Mexico.

With an event as big as the World Cup, when deciding which regions would host the prestigious tournament, public transit was a factor. Many of the host cities implemented car bans near the match sites due to traffic, making public transit essential. Numerous ridership records were broken across many transit modes during the five-plus week tournament. In Seattle, more than 1.1 million people used public transit during the first two matches. Kansas City set a one-day record for streetcar ridership on June 27 with 48,260 riders. Atlanta counted more than two million rides to matches, fan fests and other events.

The World Cup may be seen as the Super Bowl of soccer, but it is completely different in terms of mobility. While both share fan festivals and other activities leading up to the competitions, the Super Bowl is, at its most, a seven-day event, with the big game only taking place on one day. On the other hand, this year’s World Cup was a 39-day event. This massive undertaking is why most host cities started planning with their respective public transit agencies at least more than a year before the first ball was kicked.

For the Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) in Canada, Brightline, the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority (VTA) and Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) in the U.S., planning for the World Cup not only involved planning for services on match days, but planning for services on off days, too. The agencies each planned around three specific areas: 

1. Safety 
2. Service 
3. Wayfinding 

TTC

According to TTC Chief Strategy and Customer Experience Officer Josh Colle, the agency started working with the city of Toronto on the World Cup 18 months before the event began. During that time and leading up to the start of the matches, the agency implemented many efforts to better the rider experience, including: 

• New priority lanes for TTC buses.  

• A six-station wayfinding pilot program designed to make it easier for riders to navigate through some of the busiest subway stations in the city. 

• A bike‑based Special Constables Core Response Unit and a pilot program deploying drones in select locations. 

• Body cameras on station managers. 

On match days, the 29/929 Dufferin bus route ran additional service. Dedicated World Cup shuttles were available on match days, operating between key locations. Service was also increased on lines 1 and 2 of the subway system, ensuring connections to bus and streetcar routes to get riders to and from BMO Field (Toronto Stadium for the World Cup). The 509 Harbourfront and 504 King streetcar routes also increased service levels.

“We were pretty fortunate in the Toronto World Cup setup where the stadium and the major fan fest was right in our downtown core and pretty well already served by existing transit lines,” Colle said. “So what we did was we kind of identified the lines that were the key feeders for those sites. And on those lines is where we really worked on getting more priority for transit on those corridors and then also where we increased service and staffing.”

Colle notes that the agency, with funding from the city, built a temporary transit hub right outside of the fan festival within a close walk to the stadium.

The TTC is keeping all service adjustments it made for the World Cup through September, with Colle noting all of the changes the agency made for the World Cup are “intended to be forever and growing initiatives.”

“The hope is with the performance and the ridership we've seen on those corridors that the ridership boom will stick around, but maybe even help us make the case for other services we can add,” Colle said. “Toronto is blessed with no shortage of tourists and summer events.” 

Brightline

Brightline separated its World Cup service into two buckets: Match days and the fan festival. Matches took place in Florida at Hard Rock Stadium (known as Miami Stadium during the World Cup). The fan festival took place at Bayfront Park, about 15 miles away from Hard Rock Stadium. The Brightline station closest to Hard Rock Stadium is Aventura, which is approximately eight miles away. The Brightline station closest to Bayfront Park is Miami Central Station, located just a little over a mile away.

Because of the two locations being far apart, Brightline Florida CEO Patrick Goddard notes that during the World Cup, fans would take trains from points north of South Florida (Orlando, Palm Beach, Fort Lauderdale and Boca), come to Aventura for the match and then come to Miami Central Station to attend the fan festival.

To make the transit experience as seamless as possible, the agency partnered with Miami-Dade County, Fla., which set up four transit hubs that serviced the stadium with shuttles.

“Anybody who had a ticket to the game could travel to the Aventura Station by train or by car, and then from there, show their ticket to get transported to and from the events at the Miami Stadium,” Goddard said. “And then similarly, people would take the train all the way down to Miami Central and walk or take a freebie or a Metro mover to the fan fest events.”

Goddard says people could also ride South Florida Regional Transportation Authority (Tri-Rail) trains from any of its train stations and arrive at Tri-Rail’s Golden Glades commuter rail station, where they could connect directly to shuttle services that transported them to Miami Stadium. He notes that this collaboration with all of the Florida agencies was the biggest highlight of the planning process.

“We work very closely with Miami-Dade County on a lot of events. We work very closely with Tri-Rail on a lot of events. We share a station with [Tri-Rail] at Miami Central. I think it probably enhanced some of that coordination and collaboration and the relationships between our teams and our relationships with the stadium,” Goddard noted.

Fares were not adjusted for the World Cup, as Goddard explains the agency uses a dynamic pricing model. Short-haul trips are described as anyone traveling between West Palm Beach and Miami and long-haul is anybody that touches the Orlando station.

“There really was no feedback from our guests relative to fares that were being charged during the games, and we moved anywhere between 2,000 and 3,000 people per game,” Goddard said. “We optimized trains so there was two to three trains per match to get you there, and two to three trains to get you out of there.”

Service increased from trains running every hour out of the stadium to every half hour on match days, which Goddard notes the agency already does for Miami Dolphin home games at Hard Rock Stadium. To enhance the station experience during match days, the agency reimagined its food and beverage options and added more safety personnel at Aventura and Miami Central stations. The agency reported no arrests were made at stations during the World Cup.

In terms of accessibility for tourists, Goddard believes the agency lucked out with the teams that were playing in Miami, as most of the native languages in those countries are English, Spanish and Portuguese.

“Those three languages, plus Creole, we already have available throughout our digital experience and in most of our announcements in station and onboard, so I think for the most part, people were able to navigate our systems without too much difficulty,” Goddard said. 

Santa Clara VTA

Santa Clara VTA started planning for the World Cup in 2024 as part of its mega events planning initiative for not only the World Cup, but Super Bowl LX that took place in February 2026. Both events took place at Levi’s Stadium (known as San Francisco Bay Area Stadium for the World Cup) in Santa Clara, Calif.

According to Santa Clara VTA Public Information Officer Stacey Hendler Ross, since the stadium already hosted Super Bowl 50 a decade earlier in 2016, the agency leaned on that experience when planning for not only Super Bowl LX, but the World Cup. She also noted the agency carried riders to the stadium for a Taylor Swift concert in 2023, and so the agency already had a grasp on how to move a massive crowd in reasonable time.

Along with Santa Clara, the city of San Jose hosted events for the World Cup, including fan festivals. Ross notes the challenge with the World Cup was the rules for trains coming to the stadium.

“Because of security restrictions, we were not allowed to bring our trains in front of the stadium, so we couldn't run the trains from the east side [the Lick Mill Station] to the Great America Station, which is on the west side of the stadium,” Ross said.

With the restrictions in place, the agency had to run trains only to the Lick Mill Station from the east and to the Great America Station from the west.

“Serving those two separate stations was a very different situation that we had to plan carefully for in terms of how many trains would be assigned to each station,” Ross noted.

In terms of extra security for the World Cup, Santa Clara VTA hosted law enforcement agencies and transit agencies from throughout the Bay Area for a conference on human trafficking approximately eight months before the event. During the World Cup, the agency had increased security from the Santa Clara County Sheriff's Department throughout the system, as well as Allied Universal, a private security company the agency uses for massive events, patrolling stations and transit systems.

Ross notes the agency had “one or two false alarms” where security personnel had to check a suspicious package that was left on the train, but there were no arrests.

In terms of wayfinding, the agency worked closely with the other 27 agencies in the area on a regular basis to ensure riders could easily identify logos and signs in various languages. According to Ross, in Santa Clara VTA’s Customer Service Department, staff there have the ability to tap into almost any language in the world. 

The agency also had ambassadors in the field who were multilingual. If the ambassador didn't speak the specific language that someone needed, the ambassador would refer the person to customer service.

Levi’s Stadium hosted six matches for the World Cup. Ross says the agency was expecting a high of around 30,000 passengers, but the agency carried a max ridership of 42,000. Ross notes the standard to clear platforms during NFL games is two hours, and with more people riding to Levi’s Stadium for the World Cup, platforms were cleared in approximately 90 minutes. 

BART 

BART’s service areas were not a World Cup host site. Instead, the agency played a role in helping riders transfer to Santa Clara VTA and/or Caltrain via BART’s Millbrae Station and making sure that all services aligned to get riders to Levi’s Stadium in time for the matches.  

Marshalette Ramsey, BART’s operations control center manager, notes one of the unique service changes the agency made for the World Cup was creating service post-revenue hours, due to most of the matches taking place in the evening.

“Instead of dropping fans off and leaving them to their own devices, BART came up with a limited service plan to be able to get everyone home at the end of the night,” Ramsey said. “We collaborated with [Santa Clara] VTA to make sure when they ran their last shuttle, we were there to transfer those fans and get them back home. That's a little outside of our normal service area.”

Ramsey explains that with the service changes, BART changed its maintenance schedule during the 39-day event, as the times trains were running on match days were times maintenance crews would usually be working. Due to the high demand, staff worked extra hours and more trains were in service.

The first match at Levi’s Stadium took place on June 16. For that first match day, BART had what Ramsey detailed as limited stop service, resulting in riders who were parking their cars at certain stations close to Milpitas Station being skipped as part of BART’s original service plan. After the first match, the agency received feedback and implemented a new service plan that covered the areas that were skipped within three days. 

In terms of wayfinding, the agency made sure its maps on service plans showed images of stations. Additional support personnel camped out at Millbrae Station to help riders navigate. Making payment methods contactless and accessible through a mobile app throughout each of the California host agencies was also a big goal. 

“We worked together with not only our marketing team, but other regional agencies to make sure the same color palette, the same imagery was consistent throughout all of our signs,” Ramsey noted. “We did not want riders to have a full-on culture shock that they were attending the same event but using multiple, different agencies.”

The marketing teams of the transit agencies still meet quarterly now that the World Cup has concluded to better their collaboration efforts.