MA: The MBTA is about to face a test unlike any in recent memory

Exactly 10 months from this past Wednesday, the fifth match of the 2026 FIFA World Cup will kick off in Foxborough.

That day, and on six other match days through June and July next year, the MBTA will be responsible for transporting as many as 20,000 fans to Gillette Stadium — ahem, Boston Stadium, as the venue about 20 miles southwest of Downtown Boston will be called during the tournament.

That’s no small feat.

It’s roughly a third of the stadium’s capacity. It’s nearly twice as many people as the crowd that took the MBTA commuter rail to the venue from Boston or Providence to see the Army- Navy football game in December 2023.

For last year’s eight Patriots home games, about 1,700 fans on average took the commuter rail to Foxborough. Some 9,000 Taylor Swift fans bought commuter rail tickets across three nights of Eras Tour shows in May 2023. About a month later, 2,800 people did the same to see Ed Sheeran the night he broke Gillette Stadium’s attendance record, according to figures provided by the T.

But the World Cup is a different beast.

The tournament spans five-and-a-half work weeks, throwing soccer fans from around the world into the normal hustle and bustle of the region at the peak of summer heat.

The World Cup’s first two weeks overlap with the last eight days of the Boston school year. Six of the seven matches in Foxborough fall on weekdays, and could start as early as noon or as late as 9 p.m. One is on Juneteenth, a Friday kickstarting a long weekend for many workers.

Throughout the World Cup, crowds will also arrive in Boston for near-daily Fan Festival events, including marquee matches that organizers hope to broadcast at City Hall Plaza.

The Fourth of July lands halfway through the tournament, with annual celebrations and the four-day Boston Harborfest supplemented by a litany of special events to commemorate the nation’s 250th birthday.

On July 9, Boston Stadium hosts a quarterfinal match. On July 11, an armada of tall ships — those gallant, old-school sailing vessels — will arrive in Boston Harbor for six days as part of a multi-city voyage up the East Coast celebrating 250 years since American independence.

A monumental task for the MBTA

Suffice to say, June and July 2026 will be busy, and a monumental task awaits the staff of the MBTA. Planning has long been underway.

“The MBTA moves thousands of people across the region every day. What sets the World Cup apart is the concentration of that travel demand to a single destination, such as Foxboro Station, for each match,” Erika Mazza, the T’s chief enterprise development officer, said in a statement through an agency spokesperson.

“This is going to be a high-capacity operation,” said Rod Brooks, the MBTA’s senior advisor for capital, operations and safety.

Preparing for a generational event

Many fans will be arriving from countries with robust public transit. Many will be eager to dodge the stadium’s infamous traffic.

The T expects high interest in the limited seats on its gameday trains, which will run with special event tickets similar to Patriots games or high-profile concerts. Currently, round-trip tickets to concerts and Pats games cost $20,

“The only thing that sells out faster, evidently, than a Beyonce or a Taylor Swift ticket is an MBTA ticket,” Brooks told the MBTA’s Board of Directors during a meeting on Tuesday. “So we are well aware that the demand is going to be there.”

Eyes are trained on December, when FIFA will announce the exact match times. The organization has said matches could start at 12 p.m., 4 p.m., 6 p.m. or 9 p.m. — each of which will affect how the MBTA manages its event day plans, Mazza told the T board.

Swift and Sheeran’s shows and Army-Navy were weekend events, as are most Patriots games. A World Cup match dropped into the middle of a work and school day would present a different set of challenges.

The T plans to finalize its match day train schedule by February and put commuter rail tickets on sale in April or May, Brooks said Tuesday.

Reaching Foxborough by train is not quite the same trip it was in 1994, the last time men’s World Cup games were played there, Mazza said. Riders now have near-instant access to information via smartphones. Still, the T is working with FIFA and the Boston Host Committee on multilingual communications and signage to guide international fans through transit stations.

The MBTA said it also plans to launch a “comprehensive public information campaign” early next year to educate fans and residents on planning their travel during the tournament.

In preparation for the crowds, the MBTA is also installing a new permanent, full-length, ADA-accessible platform at Foxboro Station — one example of an infrastructure upgrade agency officials say will have lasting benefits for riders long after the World Cup has left town.

The Kraft Group, owners of the Patriots and the stadium, is paying for the design of the upgraded train station. The MBTA is still in discussions with the organization on the final costs and “potential contributions for construction,” MBTA General Manager Phillip Eng told the agency’s board.

The T is one of 26 public transit agencies seeking a collective $400 million in federal funding from Congress to support increased train and bus service, security, wages and other expenses tied to the World Cup.

Though the Senate approved some of the sought-after money last month, “we are working still towards getting adequate funding,” Mazza said.

Security plans are in development in partnership with local, state and federal law enforcement. The scale of the event requires a level of security and interagency coordination on par with the Boston Marathon, Brooks said.

But for police, each World Cup match also presents unique challenges beyond another sporting event of equal size, MBTA Board Member Peter Koutoujian, the sheriff of Middlesex County, said Tuesday.

“This is not just large crowds. It’s not just a target environment. It’s also a soccer environment with multiple cultures,” he said. “And there will have to be a lot of training and really understanding about how to manage that part. It’s not just moving bodies on the MBTA with a large sporting event. This is a whole different dynamic.”

The planning effort also involves coordinating with other public transit agencies, including Amtrak and officials in neighboring states. The World Cup Final will be held at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey, just outside New York City.

“The proximity of the championship match is critical and important to those who most likely will be traveling within the greater Northeast region for these games,” Mazza said. “We expect to have a large fan population here during the championship match because tickets obviously are quite limited.”

World Cup and weekday traffic collide

On a typical weekday, nearly 10,000 people ride the Franklin/ Foxboro commuter rail line. More than 20,000 take the Providence/ Stoughton line, according to data from the public transit advocacy group TransitMatters.

About 86,000 passengers also collectively take the Green Line and Blue Line on an average weekday. The lines cross paths at Government Center, where World Cup fans would disembark if matches are to be broadcast at City Hall Plaza.

The MBTA hopes to minimize any impediments to daily riders’ commutes, Mazza said. It will also pause construction projects during the tournament to keep trains running reliably.

Many details, from the exact match times to where in Boston the games could be televised for a large crowd, have yet to be announced.

“These are the things we don’t know,” Mazza said Tuesday. “But every day we’re walking further into getting to the final answers.”

Officials plan to do a “dry run” of game-day transportation in the months before the tournament, Brooks said.

He is thankful the first match is on a Saturday, allowing for adjustments before the first weekday match on the following Tuesday.

Under Eng, the T has spent the last two years completing a lengthy list of overdue maintenance projects and infrastructure upgrades, while also working to repair its image with the public.

Working with other agencies to manage the masses of new passengers is “not just a test of our regional coordination,” Mazza told the T board. “It’s an opportunity for us to show that we are leaders.”