The United States men’s national team will base themselves in Irvine, California for the World Cup, Irvine Mayor Larry Argan announced in his state of the city address on Tuesday night. The team will train at Great Park Championship Soccer Stadium, a facility built in 2017 and the everyday home of the USL Championship’s Orange County SC.
“We are delighted to have Great Park as our training site for the 2026 Fifa World Cup,” US Soccer Sporting Director Matt Crocker said in a statement. “The facilities are simply outstanding and will provide the perfect training environment for our team to prepare to be successful at the World Cup.”
The decision to base the team in Irvine will also have geographic advantages – the US plays two of its three World Cup group stage games at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, just under 50 miles by road from Great Park.
The move also echoes the United States’ preparations for the last men’s World Cup as hosts. For that tournament in 1994, the US also trained in Southern California and stayed at a resort in Dana Point, a coastal location that was praised by players for its serene vibe in the midst of the World Cup pressure cooker.
In other ways, though, the location could hardly be more different. Great Park is far from the Pacific coastline, nestled among Orange County’s suburban sprawl and development. Championship Soccer Stadium is one of several points of interest in and around Great Park, a city development that has been popular with locals since its opening in 2007.
It also carries some interesting history. The site on which the park sits was previous home to a US Marine Corps airbase from 1942 until its decommissioning in 1999. The vast park that exists on the site now still features several of the runways that were in use when it was an airbase, including a walkable timeline of Earth’s history that begins in the year 13,000BC.
The park also features 24 soccer fields, four ice hockey rinks, sand volleyball courts, basketball courts, hiking trails, biking trails, nature preserves, and a helium balloon ride that serves as the park’s centerpiece.
The US will begin their training tenure at Great Park immediately after their final pre-World Cup friendly against Germany in Chicago on 6 June. They open the World Cup in Inglewood against Paraguay on 14 June, travel to Seattle for their second game against Australia, then return to the Los Angeles area for the final group game against the winner of a European playoff between Turkey, Slovakia, Romania, and Kosovo.
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