FIFA World Cup 2026 is less than three months away, and San Diego has a role to play in the world's most-watched sporting event.
Overall the World Cup will take place across the U.S., Mexico and Canada. While there won’t be any games in the county, two sites in San Diego have been selected as “base camps” for teams who are playing on the West Coast.
Each base camp includes a training facility and hotel. The teams will use the sites for about a month.
“They will be out here on the field training every day to prepare for all their events,” said Adam Benmoise.
He’s in charge of preparing the facilities and soccer field at San Diego Jewish Academy for the Swiss men’s national team.
The K-12 private school is located in San Diego’s Carmel Valley neighborhood. The Swiss team will stay at the nearby Fairmont Grand Del Mar hotel throughout the tournament.
“So they'll be arriving in San Diego June 2. Their first training is June 3. They will stay throughout the group stage,” Benmoise said.
He said he cried when he found out Switzerland selected their site, and it's an honor to host them.
The school is upgrading its facilities to meet FIFA World Cup standards. Benmoise said they’re trying to make it feel like a home away from home for Switzerland's soccer team.
“We're going to have boards all around the field with their branding, Swiss branding — we're going to make it red and white all around this field,” Benmoise said.
He also said base camp fields cannot be used for at least four weeks before national teams arrive, in order to protect the playing surface.
“Every other week we have the FIFA pitch department coming out here — coming to see the field, taking samples, and doing tests, making sure maintenance is on pace and everything is going to be good and ready,” he said. “We are starting construction to add even more field space so the team has a better training facility.”
He said the school has a pedigree of hosting professional soccer teams.
“We’ve hosted some of the biggest teams in the world, the U.S. men's and women's national teams have both trained here. Most MLS teams that play San Diego FC train here as well,” Benmoise said.
Around 15 miles away, the New Zealand team will stay at the Hyatt Regency La Jolla at Aventine and train at University of San Diego’s Torero Stadium.
“Right now we're planning on them being here on May 30 and all the way through — hopefully they advance — and they'll be here through the beginning of July,” said the university’s Jessica Goerke.
New Zealand coach Darren Bazeley said that timeline is possible, but the team also could be arriving closer to June 6 or June 7 due to a friendly pretournament match against England in Florida.
They're still figuring out details for another friendly match at the beginning of June. Regardless of exact travel schedules, they're happy they ended up in Southern California.
“Us being based in San Diego I think is going to be amazing — the climate and it being so close to L.A.,” Bazeley said.
Goerke said there were multiple teams interested in using the USD site for the World Cup.
“Jordan visited us, England did a virtual tour, so really over Zoom. We also got a chance to meet with Australia, Paraguay, those types of teams,” Goerke said.
She said USD is still finalizing plans for a community event, which is required for all World Cup base camps.
At San Diego Jewish Academy, Benmoise said they are looking to have students and some local youth soccer clubs come to watch a Swiss team training session for its community event.
Due to strict FIFA security regulations, the general public will not be allowed to watch training sessions at basecamp facilities.
Goerke said FIFA is particular about how each basecamp is set up, including high privacy fencing, designated media areas and specific soccer gear.
“FIFA is bringing in a lot of the equipment. So they're bringing in (soccer mannequins) and goals and a lot of things the teams need to train directly,” she said.
For those hoping to get a peek at the teams in town — there's some good news.
Swiss team operations manager Damien Mollard told KPBS they are working toward having a friendly match against another international team in the region on June 6 that will be open to the public before tournament play kicks off.
He said they're also organizing team events across San Diego.
“You have beautiful landscape, you have several parks and other activities, museums we could visit,” he said. “We are working on that and we'll definitely have some activities around the hotel, but in the region as well.”
The two teams will play first round games in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Vancouver, Canada.
FIFA has marked one other potential World Cup base camp in the region — but so far, no team has selected that site in Tijuana.
World Cup games begin June 11.
