As you settle in to watch the world’s biggest sporting event — 39 days, 48 teams, 104 matches and more than 1,200 pairs of football boots hitting the ground — it’s worth reserving a blessing for the grass.
FIFA, football’s highest governing body, determines that all matches be played on natural, live grass. More than that: the game experience, including the bounce and movement of the ball, in addition to the “feel” perceived by players, needs to be consistent from one stadium to another. (And of course, the field needs to be green too.)
Reaching this result is far from simple. The 2026 World Cup involves 16 stadiums — five of them covered, eight with permanent synthetic grass that will have to be covered — spread across three countries and under very different climates.
“We have a massive operation for this tournament,” said Alan Ferguson, senior pitch management manager at FIFA. “Our biggest challenge was precisely trying to unite all of this in a uniform way.”
Under Ferguson’s coordination, FIFA assembled a strong team of turf experts, led by John Sorochan, from the University of Tennessee, and John Rogers, from Michigan State University. Since 2018, they have been working to discover the best way to turn this green dream into reality. Here’s where they got to.
The biological starting point
There are about two dozen species of grass for sports fields — and none are the same. THE Kentucky bluegrassfor example, is typical of cold climates, adapted to lower light and shorter growth periods. Bermuda grass, which has a hot climate, does not tolerate shade. THE perennial ryegrassa cool-weather grass that grows in clumps, germinates quickly but is more vulnerable to stripping and lawn failure.
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Bermuda and Kentucky bluegrass spread laterally and can be cut very low—ideal for golf and soccer fields. Each of these grasses, as well as their combinations, has its own growth rate, specific need for humidity, ideal cutting height and even a different physics in contact with the boot.
To observe how different combinations of grass reacted to players’ movements, Sorochan’s team created fLEX, a portable device equipped with a 3D-printed foot wearing a football boot. The device reproduces the same impact, acceleration and cutting motion of a 150-pound athlete — the average weight of a men’s World Cup player — and then measures how much energy the pitch absorbs and returns to the athlete.
“Other machines just make a vertical drop, like a missile or something,” said Sorochan. “It’s the first time we’ve had something that actually consistently mimics the stomp of a foot.”
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And then there’s the ball. According to the FIFA Turf Testing Manual, a standard FIFA Quality Pro ball dropped onto the pitch from an approved 1 meter high piece of equipment — such as the Turf-Tec FIFA Ball Ramp — should roll between 5 and 8 meters, with tests carried out at various points and in various directions. Likewise, a 2 meter vertically dropped “test piece” with the RedDrop Ball Rebound Tester should bounce between 60 and 100 centimeters.
This needs to apply regardless of whether the surface is natural or synthetic, whether it uses bluegrass or Kikuyu, whether it is at sea level or 2,200 meters above sea level, as in Mexico City. Sorochan and his colleagues conducted these tests — and many others.
“We compare Bermuda grass, bluegrass, ryegrass and synthetic turf,” he said. “We also throw a football at 55 kilometers per hour, at a 17-degree angle, and we use a high-speed camera to measure the ball’s coefficient of restitution at the exit, the speed, everything.”
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The verdict? The open stadiums in Miami and Monterrey, Mexico, will use Bermuda grass. The indoor stadiums and those in the north will receive a tailored mix: 84% Kentucky bluegrass and 16% ryegrass. The result, Sorochan hopes, will be a “uniform and homogeneous” gaming experience across the 16 stadiums.
Bring the grass mats
The 15-stadium grass was grown on nine specialty farms in Canada, Mexico and the United States. (In Mexico City, the field was grown from seeds at the stadium itself.) In the longest trip, two dozen refrigerated trucks transported rolls of sod 1,250 miles, in 30 hours, from Colorado to Atlanta.
One of the innovations for 2026 is an agricultural technique known as sod on plastic, or grass grown on plastic. Traditionally, when grass is harvested, the roots are cut, which can cause transplant shock — leaving the lawn less resilient and slower to adapt to its new environment. For the World Cup, the grass was grown on a thin layer of sand supported by a plastic sheet. The roots grow downwards and then laterally, intertwining until they form a dense and resistant blanket. Then the grass can be cut, rolled for transport and installed without trauma.
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Once in place, this blanket is reinforced with plastic fibers, sewn together by a machine that looks like a cross between a steamroller and a sewing machine. These fibers serve as an anchor for the natural roots and function as rebar, helping to stabilize the field.
The fields are alive
Unlike a basketball court or a hockey rink, a football field is a living organism. Once installed, the turf needs to be kept alive for several weeks — an especially difficult task in indoor stadiums.
“Advancement in stadium design ended up taking precedence over the maintenance of football fields,” said Ferguson. “When stadiums adopted wrap-around structures — with closed roofs to protect fans and provide a better experience — they ended up blocking things like air and sunlight.”
The temporary pitches for the 2026 World Cup basically rest on a life support system. Below the installed grass there are several centimeters of sand, which provides firm cushioning, but also allows the roots to breathe more after weeks of play. Further down comes a layer of gravel or Permavoid plastic sheets, with a drainage system capable of pumping water in or out. Two-tonne LED floodlights are taken to the field and used for 12 hours a day, while industrial fans blow air over the surface to prevent mold growth.
Even after the tournament has started, testing continues every day, in every stadium, to maintain standards. “We will monitor traction, moisture and surface hardness,” Ferguson said, quickly adding that “we don’t want to damage the greens just by testing them too much.”
Keeping an eye on the grass — and hoping it grows
Ferguson will watch the entire spectacle from the FIFA Tournament Operations Center in Miami, where dozens of employees work 24 hours a day monitoring weather forecasts, flight delays and updates about the stadiums and fields.
“I’m going to watch from here every minute and every second of every game,” he said. “We’re looking for slips, bad bounces, anything that doesn’t look quite right on the field. Hopefully we don’t see too much of that.”
He said he will only take his eyes off the pitch when Scotland, his home country, enters the field: “In these 90 minutes, Scotland in first place, grass in second.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
c.2026 The New York Times Company
