# How public transit connects the World Cup host cities

By [Brandon Donnelly](https://brandondonnelly.com) · 2026-07-09

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The 2026 FIFA World Cup is being hosted across 16 different cities in Canada, the United States, and Mexico. The city hosting the most games is Dallas, with 9 matches. Supposedly, this is because the city has a nice stadium with a retractable roof and capacity for 70,649 people, and Dallas is a fairly central location for a tournament being hosted across North America.

But here's another way of looking at the stadiums. The School of Cities at the University of Toronto recently published a study called "[Transit-Oriented Stadiums](https://schoolofcities.github.io/fifa-world-cup-2026/transit-oriented-stadiums)." What they did was look at how well connected each stadium is to its host city by public transit. More specifically, they looked at how many people live within a 60-minute public transit isochrone polygon.

Dallas Stadium (AT&T Stadium) is in Arlington, Texas, and it has about 100,000 residents within a 60-minute transit trip:

![](https://storage.googleapis.com/papyrus_images/bb0e74910c2194b8f0e6838c696f18b93eae7f999cbbf575ad53180fd0e716f5.png)

Now, here's Toronto. BMO Field has a much smaller capacity (43,036 people), but over 2 million residents live within a 60-minute transit trip:

![](https://storage.googleapis.com/papyrus_images/c15b7d3a1cdaa8677fb89640d4f15449f32167bb6c0564a652019e17dfda6972.png)

Mexico City's transit catchment reaches over 2.1 million people, despite its stadium being out of the core of the city:

![](https://storage.googleapis.com/papyrus_images/5245d43ba1e73579d14d7e31cadf1e48de5ce34d26f76a421517a7d9df7e3d54.png)

And Vancouver takes the top spot with over 2.3 million people:

![](https://storage.googleapis.com/papyrus_images/96fa26007a34e8b3fdfcc19d6a2d4a8e01a274e77a43741f9c3db6ed8c7d6b7a.png)

These diagrams highlight a striking divide in land-use patterns. The two key factors are stadium placement and transit investment. Obviously, if you flipped the script and mapped the number of residents within a 60-minute drive, then Dallas Stadium would perform quite differently. But bringing 70,000 people to one location via cars will never match the spatial efficiency of public transit.

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_Cover photo by_ [_Ronin_](https://unsplash.com/@roninkgd?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText)

_Diagrams from the_ [_School of Cities_](https://schoolofcities.github.io/fifa-world-cup-2026/transit-oriented-stadiums) _at the University of Toronto_

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*Originally published on [Brandon Donnelly](https://brandondonnelly.com/how-public-transit-connects-the-world-cup-host-cities)*