Counting Down to Chaos? Miami Residents Brace for 2026 FIFA World Cup
As the 100-day countdown to the 2026 FIFA World Cup approaches, Miami residents are bracing for the influx of visitors the city will receive this summer.
Miami is one of 16 host cities in the tournament and will be the site of seven matches at Hard Rock Stadium, starting June 15.
Up to one million visitors are expected to travel to Miami-Dade County for the festivities, according to FOX Business. Despite the economic boost the tourists will bring to the city, some local residents are not looking forward to the negative effects that come with welcoming the crowds.
Moises Montenegro – who lives in the West Flagler, located near Miami International Airport and the recently constructed Miami Freedom Park – is dreading the extra traffic the event will bring to the city.
“From a social perspective, I guess it’s a good thing,” Montenegro said. “But on the other side of the coin, there’s all the stuff like traffic, which is already pretty bad in that area.”
Born and raised in Miami, Lauren Gerarde currently lives in the Brickell neighborhood, also known as the financial district of the city where many hotels and businesses are located. From her home, she sees plenty of traffic daily.
While she’s excited for many of the changes the World Cup will bring, traffic is not one of them.
“The congestion is going to be unbearable,” she said. “Even just going to get groceries, you’ll see the difference. … There’s just going to be a lot of chaos going on.”
While Gerarde said that the World Cup would bring a lot of benefits, especially culturally, she emphasized that the influx of people might be overwhelming for locals as Miami has not hosted an event of this scale.
Miami has hosted large-scale sporting events such as the Super Bowl, the Miami Open and the FIFA Club World Cup in the past. However, the FIFA World Cup is widely considered to be the largest sporting event in the world.
The most recent Super Bowl in Miami hosted 62,417 attendees. The Miami Open welcomed just over 400,000 people in 2025. In contrast, around 6.5 million people are expected to attend the World Cup matches in 2026, according to a socioeconomic impact analysis conducted by FIFA.
Deven Gonzalez, another Miami local, does not believe the city is ready to host the event. Gonzalez lives in the Miami Shores area in the northern part of the county, where several hotels are situated along the nearby Biscayne Bay.
She’s unable to fathom the level of congestion on the roads around the World Cup grounds.
“Whenever there’s a big event in Miami, all of I-95 and most highways are affected,” Gonzalez said. “There is so much construction going on already that is almost impossible to navigate.
“A lot of Miami natives don’t like a lot of tourism because they affect everything. “Summer is already a really hectic time and then on top of that: the World Cup. It’s going to be insane.”
Additionally, the matches will feature teams with some of the largest fanbases in the world. Portugal, Colombia and Brazil are among the teams that will play in Miami. Fans will likely travel from all over the country and world for a chance to see the biggest names of the sport play.
“We’re definitely going to see a really big influx of fans just coming to see [the teams] play,” Montenegro said. “There’s never been an opportunity like that to see your favorite team or your favorite player play like that down here in South Florida.”
As Miami gets ready to receive hundreds of thousands of tourists in a few months, residents like Montenegro, Gerarde and Gonzalez are preparing for the worst.
“I think it’s going to be a little more alarming to everyone, especially the locals, because I don’t think that they are really prepared for what’s coming,” Gerarde said.
Category: International Soccer, Soccer, World Cup
