LONDON – The Football Association of England has confirmed the schedule for the men’s national team’s pre-World Cup warm-up fixtures, revealing two high-profile exhibition matches will take place across Florida in June ahead of the 2026 FIFA World Cup co-hosted by North America.
Announced on Thursday, Thomas Tuchel’s Three Lions will kick off their warm-up campaign at Tampa’s Raymond James Stadium on June 6, taking on Oceania qualifier New Zealand. Four days later on June 10, the squad will move across the state to face CONCACAF representative Costa Rica at Orlando’s Inter&Co Stadium.
To streamline their final preparations for the expanded 48-team tournament, which will run across June and July 2026, England has chosen south Florida as the location for its pre-tournament training camp. Once the World Cup gets underway, the squad will relocate to a permanent basecamp in Kansas City, Missouri for the duration of their participation in the competition.
England has been drawn into Group L for the group stage of the tournament, where they will face Croatia, Ghana and Panama. All three of the team’s group-stage fixtures will be hosted across major U.S. cities: Dallas, Boston, and the New York/New Jersey metropolitan area.
Both selected venues have established histories hosting major global and professional sporting events. Raymond James Stadium, which welcomed over 70,000 fans for the 2021 Super Bowl LV, is the regular home ground of the National Football League’s Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Inter&Co Stadium, meanwhile, is the home venue for Major League Soccer’s Orlando City SC and the National Women’s Soccer League’s Orlando Pride, purpose-built for top-tier professional soccer competition.
The 2026 FIFA World Cup marks the first time the tournament has been co-hosted by three nations, with matches split across 16 host cities across the United States, Canada, and Mexico. England’s pre-tournament North American tour is designed to help the squad acclimate to travel conditions, time zones, and playing surfaces ahead of their bid for the country’s second World Cup title.