Four days from now, the biggest sporting event on the planet kicks off in our backyard. On Sunday afternoon, the Netherlands and Japan take the field at the stadium every local still calls AT&T Stadium, the first of nine FIFA World Cup matches Arlington will host over the next month, more than any other venue in the entire 104-game tournament.
Whether you have tickets, want the experience without them, or mostly want to know when to avoid Collins Street, here is the local’s guide to the next five weeks.
Nine matches, and a name change to get used to
Under FIFA’s sponsorship rules, corporate names come off venues for the tournament, so through mid-July the building in Arlington’s entertainment district is officially “Dallas Stadium.” Locals can be forgiven an eye roll on both counts. Per the City of Arlington’s schedule announcement, the slate breaks down as five group stage matches, two Round of 32 games, one Round of 16 game, and a semifinal on July 14.
The group stage lineup: Netherlands vs Japan this Sunday, June 14, at 3 p.m.; England vs Croatia on Wednesday, June 17, at 3 p.m.; Argentina, the defending champion, vs Austria on Monday, June 22, at noon; Japan against its final Group F opponent on Thursday, June 25, at 6 p.m.; and Jordan vs Argentina on Saturday, June 27, at 9 p.m. The knockout games follow on June 30, July 3 and July 6, with the semifinal capping the run on July 14. Eight national teams play here in the group stage alone, and if Argentina advances the way the bracket allows, North Texas could see Lionel Messi more than once.
No ticket? Fair Park is the move
The official FIFA Fan Festival for the Dallas host city opens tomorrow, June 11, at Fair Park and runs every day of the tournament through July 19. It is free and open to the public, with giant screens showing every match of the tournament, live music, food and family activities across the fairgrounds, according to the North Texas FIFA World Cup Organizing Committee. For most of us, this is the actual World Cup experience: the England match at 3 p.m. on a Wednesday with several thousand new best friends costs nothing but a DART ride to Fair Park station on the Green Line.
Watch parties will bloom at bars and community centers across DFW all month, but Fair Park is the sanctioned big-screen version, and the one place guaranteed to show every single match.
Still want in the building?
Tickets for all matches are sold through FIFA’s official channels at FIFA.com/tickets, and resale runs through FIFA’s official resale platform as well. The consumer-protection note worth repeating: buy only through FIFA’s site. A tournament this size is a magnet for counterfeit tickets and too-good-to-be-true listings, and a QR code bought from a stranger on social media is a coin flip. The same caution goes for last-minute lodging deals; book through platforms you can dispute charges on.
Hospitality packages, the guaranteed-seat route with real prices to match, are sold through FIFA’s official hospitality provider, linked from the same page.
Traffic and getting there: plan like it’s nine Cowboys games
Arlington’s entertainment district handles Cowboys and Rangers crowds routinely, but the World Cup adds midweek kickoffs at noon and 3 p.m., which drop stadium traffic on top of ordinary workday traffic on I-30 and Highway 360. If your daily route crosses the district, the match schedule above doubles as your avoidance calendar; give the area a wide berth for a few hours before and after each kickoff.
Arlington famously has no citywide fixed-route transit, so plan deliberately. The city’s Arlington On-Demand rideshare service covers the city in shared vans at low fares, and the Trinity Railway Express CentrePort station on the Fort Worth-Dallas line is the nearest rail link to the district. Official match-day parking and any special shuttle operations run through the tournament’s official channels, so check the Arlington visitors bureau’s World Cup hub before each match rather than assuming Cowboys-game habits will hold. Expect parking prices to reflect a once-in-a-generation event.
A month worth being a homer about
Set aside the traffic grumbling for one paragraph. The semifinal on July 14 will be one of the most-watched sporting events ever held in Texas, and the group stage brings Argentina, England, the Netherlands and Japan to a stadium 20 minutes from downtown Fort Worth. Kids in Grand Prairie and Haltom City will watch World Cup teams train and ride around in team buses on our freeways. Whatever your soccer literacy, the next five weeks are a front-porch seat to something North Texas may not host again for decades. Look up one match, pick your spot, and be able to say you were here for it.
This article was produced with AI assistance and reviewed by a human editor. Figures are linked to their primary sources; where a claim could not be verified from the public record, we say so.
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