About Me

About Me — Road to 2026

I still remember the exact moment I decided this blog needed to exist.

It was sometime around 11 PM on a Tuesday, and I was three browser tabs deep into trying to figure out whether I needed a Canadian eTA or a full visa to cross from Vancouver to Seattle during the World Cup. One tab had outdated government information. Another linked to a travel forum where the last reply was from 2019. The third was a generic “travel tips” article that had clearly been written by someone who had never actually been to either city, let alone tried to plan a multi-country trip around a once-in-a-generation sporting event.

I closed the laptop. Made a cup of tea. And thought: someone needs to actually figure this stuff out and write it down properly.

That someone ended up being me.

Where This All Started

My relationship with the World Cup is the kind of thing that’s hard to explain to people who didn’t grow up with it. I didn’t grow up in a country where soccer is the national religion, but I grew up in a household where the World Cup was treated like one. Every four years, the television schedule was rearranged, strange hours were kept, and the whole family — regardless of who was actually playing — had opinions about every result.

I went to my first World Cup match as an adult on a trip I’d barely planned and absolutely could not afford at the time. I watched a group stage game in a stadium that was far from full, in a city I barely knew, surrounded by strangers who became temporary best friends for ninety minutes. I didn’t even care that much about either of the teams. But something about the scale of it, the internationalism of it, the fact that tens of thousands of people from dozens of countries had all independently decided that this mattered enough to travel for — I was completely hooked.

That was the moment the World Cup stopped being something I watched and started being something I chased.

The Gap Between Hype and Reality

Here’s what I’ve learned after years of following this tournament, attending matches, and watching thousands of other fans try to do the same thing: there is an enormous gap between the information that exists and the information that’s actually useful.

The official sources are thorough but often impenetrable. The fan forums are passionate but unstructured. The travel content tends to treat World Cup visitors like they’ve never left their home country before, full of condescending advice about drinking water and wearing sunscreen. And the ticketing content — don’t even get me started on the ticketing content, which is either completely out of date or so generic it could apply to any major sporting event in any city anywhere in the world.

What almost never exists is someone sitting down and actually walking through the real experience. What does it feel like to navigate the ticket resale market when you’re genuinely worried about being scammed? What’s the commute actually like from downtown to the stadium — not the official estimate, but the real one, accounting for the fact that every other person in the city is trying to do the same thing at the same time? Which ticket category is worth paying more for, and which one sounds impressive but leaves you so far from the pitch that the players look like colored ants?

Road to 2026 exists to answer those questions.

What I Actually Do Here

I spend a lot of time on logistics that most people find boring until they’re in the middle of them and realize they matter enormously. Border crossings. Transit routes. Accommodation zones. Payment systems that don’t work the way you expect when you’re in a foreign country. The kind of granular, situational detail that never makes it into a highlights reel but makes the difference between a trip that works and a trip that turns into a stress management exercise.

I also write honestly about the things that are uncomfortable to write about. The safety question in Mexico City, for example — there’s a version of that conversation that’s just “follow common sense and you’ll be fine,” which is technically true but not actually useful to someone who’s never been there and is genuinely nervous. There’s another version that’s just catastrophizing, which is irresponsible. I try to write the version that’s actually honest: nuanced, specific, respectful of the place and the people who live there, and genuinely helpful to someone making a real decision.

Same with venues. I love stadiums. I find the architecture, the sight lines, the crowd dynamics, the food options, the bathroom situation (yes, really) genuinely fascinating. But some venues are better than others, and some are actively disappointing despite what the promotional materials say, and I think fans deserve to know that before they book.

The 2026 Tournament Specifically

The 2026 FIFA World Cup is something genuinely unprecedented. Three host countries — the United States, Canada, and Mexico — across a massive geographic footprint, with 48 teams competing instead of the usual 32, in venues that range from purpose-built soccer stadiums to NFL behemoths that hold more people than some small cities.

It’s the most ambitious World Cup ever staged, and that ambition creates opportunities and complications in roughly equal measure. Fans have more choices than ever before, which is wonderful. They also have more ways to make expensive mistakes, which is less wonderful. The cross-border logistics alone are genuinely complex in ways that didn’t exist when the tournament was hosted in a single country. Three currencies. Three sets of visa requirements. Three transportation systems. Three different ways that ticketing works in practice versus how it’s supposed to work in theory.

I’ve been mapping all of this out — the venues, the cities, the transportation links, the accommodation markets, the food scenes, the cultural context — because I find it genuinely interesting, but also because I think there are a lot of fans out there who want to be there in 2026 and are quietly overwhelmed by the scale of what planning that actually involves.

You don’t have to figure it out alone. That’s kind of the whole point of this.

Some Things About Me That Are Probably Relevant

I’ve attended World Cup matches across multiple tournaments and multiple continents. I’ve been to games where everything went perfectly and games where almost everything went wrong, and I’ve learned more from the second category than the first.

I have a genuine obsession with public transit that predates the World Cup by many years. I will always, given a choice, take the train. I will also always have a backup plan for when the train is delayed, overcrowded, or — in certain American cities — simply doesn’t go where I need to go.

I speak enough Spanish to navigate Mexico with confidence and enough French to order food and apologize for my French in Canada, which I’ve found covers roughly 90% of what’s actually required.

I am a reasonably experienced traveler who is not a travel influencer. I don’t have a partnership with any ticketing platform, hotel chain, or airline. I don’t make money if you click a certain link. When I recommend something, it’s because I think it’s good. When I tell you to avoid something, it’s because I’ve either experienced the problem firsthand or talked to enough people who have that I’m confident it’s real.

Why I Trust the Research Here

I want to be transparent about something, because I think it matters: a lot of what I write involves genuinely digging into primary sources, official documentation, and the kind of granular detail that takes time to find and verify. When I write about visa requirements for Canadians crossing into Mexico, I’m not summarizing a summary of a summary. When I write about ticket transfer rules, I’ve read the actual FIFA terms and conditions, which are long and not particularly fun to read.

I also talk to people. Fans who went to previous tournaments. Local guides. Hotel managers in host cities who have opinions about which neighborhoods are actually convenient and which ones just look convenient on a map. Fixers and local contacts who know things that don’t appear in any article. The texture of a city is hard to fake if you’ve spent time in it.

I get things wrong sometimes. When that happens, I correct them. If you spot something that’s outdated or inaccurate, I genuinely want to know — the goal is for this to be useful, and it can’t be useful if it’s wrong.

What’s Coming

Between now and the summer of 2026, I’m planning to cover just about every piece of the puzzle. The ticketing process from registration through to seat selection. Venue guides for all 16 stadiums across the three countries. City-by-city accommodation breakdowns. Transportation logistics. Food guides. Safety guides. Budget strategies. Family travel. Solo travel. The corporate hospitality market, which is its own strange universe. The fan zones and public viewing options for people who can’t get tickets or don’t want them.

There’s a lot of ground to cover. I’m looking forward to covering it.

Let’s Stay In Touch

If you have a question that isn’t answered somewhere on this site, or if you’ve spotted an error, or if you just want to talk World Cup logistics with someone who finds this stuff as interesting as you do — I’m easy to reach. Drop me a line at [email protected] and I’ll do my best to get back to you.

Welcome to Road to 2026. There’s a lot of road still ahead, and it’s going to be a good trip.

Road to 2026 — lbbcse.com