While you settle down to watch the World Cup, the biggest sporting event in the world — 39 days, 48 teams, 104 matches and more than 1,200 pairs of feet wearing soccer cleats —, pay some attention to the stadium pitches.
FIFA, football’s international governing body, requires that all World Cup matches be played on natural grass.
Furthermore, the game experience — including the bounce and movement of the ball, as well as the “feel” of the players — must be a consistent and present part of all stadiums. And the field needs to be green.
Reaching this point is no easy task. The 2026 World Cup involves 16 stadiums — 5 of them with roofs and 8 with permanent artificial grass (which needs to be installed on top) — spread across three countries, each with a very different climate.
“We have a huge area for the tournament. Trying to bring it all together in a uniform way has been our biggest challenge,” said Alan Ferguson, FIFA’s senior pitch management manager.
Under Ferguson’s guidance, FIFA assembled a cutting-edge team of turf experts, led by John Sorochan of the University of Tennessee and John Rogers of Michigan State University, who have been working since 2018 to determine the best way to realize the green dream.
Below are the conclusions they reached.
The biological key point
There are two dozen species of grass for lawns; none are the same as the other. Kentucky bluegrass is a cool-weather species adapted to lower light levels and shorter growing seasons.
Hot-climate Bermuda grass cannot handle shade. Perennial ryegrass, a tufted grass in cold climates, germinates quickly, but is more vulnerable to the formation of holes.
Ideal for golf and soccer fields, Bermuda grass and Kentucky bluegrass grow laterally and can be cut close to the ground.
Each of these grasses (and their combinations) has its own growth rate, moisture requirement and ideal cutting height, in addition to presenting different physical characteristics when in contact with the boot.
To observe how different pitch combinations responded to players’ movements, Sorochan’s team invented fLEX, a portable device equipped with a 3D-printed foot fitted with a football boot.
he hits the turf with the same impact, the same acceleration and the same cutting motion as a 150-pound athlete (the average weight of a men’s World Cup player) and then measures how much energy the turf absorbs and returns to the player.
“Other machines that were previously used in this work just did a vertical drop, like a missile or something. This is the first time we have something that truly imitates a consistent foot impact,” Sorochan noted.
You also need to consider the behavior of the ball.
According to the FIFA Lawn Testing Manual, a model with FIFA Quality Pro certification — when launched from an approved one-meter-high device, such as the Turf-Tec Ramp — must roll five to eight meters, in tests applied at different points and directions on the field.
Additionally, when a sample is dropped vertically from a height of two meters with the RedDrop Ball Rebound Tester, it should rebound between two feet and one meter.
This applies to natural or synthetic surfaces, to blue or kikuyu grass, at sea level or at an altitude of 2,225 meters in Mexico City. Sorochan and his colleagues ran these tests and many others.
“We compared Bermuda grass to blue grass, ryegrass and synthetic grass. And we threw a football at 55 kilometers per hour at a 17-degree angle, using a high-speed camera to measure the ball’s coefficient of restitution as it came out, the speed and everything else,” he said.
The verdict? Open-air stadiums in Miami and Monterrey, Mexico, use Bermuda grass, while indoor and northern stadiums use a custom blend of 84 percent Kentucky bluegrass and 16 percent ryegrass.
Sorochan hopes the result will be a “uniform and homogenous” gaming experience across all 16 stadiums.
Bring us the lawn
The turf for 15 stadiums was grown on nine sod farms spread across Canada, Mexico and the United States. (In Mexico City, the turf was grown from seeds in the stadium itself.)
For the longest trip, two dozen refrigerated trucks transported rolls of lawn 2,253 kilometers, driving for 30 hours, from Colorado to Atlanta, Georgia.
One of the innovations for 2026 is an agricultural technique known as “growing grass on plastic.”
Traditionally, when grass is harvested, the roots are cut, which can cause transplant shock, resulting in a less resilient lawn that takes longer to adapt to its new location.
For the World Cup, the grass was grown on a thin layer of sand on top of a plastic tarp. The roots grow downward and then sideways, intertwining into a dense, tough mat. The lawn can then be cut into strips, rolled up for transport and installed without damage.
Once on site, the lawn is reinforced with plastic fibers, stitched together by a machine that resembles a combination steamroller and sewing machine. The fibers serve as anchors for natural roots and act like a braid of rebar to stabilize the field.
The fields are alive
Unlike a basketball court or a hockey rink, a football field is a living, breathing entity. After it is installed, the turf needs to be kept alive for several weeks — an especially difficult task in covered stadiums.
“Advances in stadium design kind of bypassed the problem of maintaining the football field. When they started to have a wraparound roof — a closed roof to protect fans and provide a better experience — stadiums started to block elements like air and sunlight,” explained Alan Ferguson.
The temporary pitches for the 2026 World Cup have a true life support system.
Under the grass rolls there is a layer of several centimeters of sand which, in addition to providing firm cushioning, maintains oxygenation of the roots even after weeks of games.
Just below, a layer of gravel or Permavoid plastic modules integrates a bidirectional drainage system, capable of injecting water or pumping it out.
Every day, mobile structures with LED panels for cultivation (which weigh two tons) operate for 12 hours over the field, while industrial fans circulate the air on the surface to prevent the growth of fungi.
Even after the tournament begins, testing continues, every day, in each stadium, to maintain standards.
“We will keep an eye on traction, moisture and surface hardness. We don’t want to damage the fields with excessive testing,” Ferguson concluded.
