Boston Named Recipient of National Sports Diplomacy Award for Its Welcome to the World During the FIFA World Cup 2026

A citywide welcome, carried into every neighborhood

Boston hosted seven matches and 447,283 spectators, each of them a sellout. The City of Boston paired that with a public welcome designed to reach residents and visitors well beyond the stadium.

City Hall Plaza — the seat of municipal government — was given over to the FIFA Fan Festival for sixteen days, free and open to the public, drawing roughly 160,000 people from 108 countries and pairing live match broadcasts with a Cultural Showcase of local artists, musicians and performers. The City produced six free community watch parties in neighborhoods from Dorchester to East Boston, chosen to reflect Boston communities with deep ties to competing nations, and funded residents to host their own celebrations through the Summer Block Party Grant Program and the Office of Cultural Affairs Mini Grant Program. More than 100 free watch parties ultimately ran across more than 30 Massachusetts communities.

Working with private partners, the City and the Boston Host Committee provided more than 500 match tickets and round-trip transportation at no cost to Boston residents, distributed through youth-serving and cultural organizations, including the Soccer Unity Project.

“We were thrilled to show the world what Bostonians do every day: come together as a beautiful, welcoming, family-friendly home for everyone. This recognition celebrates the warm and welcoming spirit of Boston’s people, from our neighborhood leaders and small business owners, to every City worker who helped ensure visitors from around the world had an experience of a lifetime,” said Mayor Michelle Wu. “I am grateful to our residents, businesses, and City teams for showcasing our city and working every day for Boston to have the highest quality of life, a culture of innovation, and an uncommon dedication to the common good.”

A framework that existed before the first match

The nomination documented a welcome that was planned rather than improvised. Boston's approach was guided by the Boston Sports Diplomacy Playbook, published by WorldBoston in April 2026 and described by PDCA as "believed to be the first dedicated city-level sports diplomacy framework in North America." The Playbook guided engagement through the tournament and sets a framework running through 2030.

WorldBoston was founded in 1949 and has served as the U.S. Department of State's trusted partner in the region — connecting international visitors with Boston workplaces, institutions and households. In the past decade the organization has hosted more than 8,000 international visitors representing 190 countries, working with 355 communities across the region.

In April 2026, WorldBoston convened Diplomacy Now: Advancing Global Connection Through Sport, a free public program at the Boston Public Library, with participation from the U.S. Department of State's sports diplomacy leadership. In June, at United Nations Headquarters in New York, WorldBoston Sports Envoy Cody Damon presented Boston's approach at the World Cup Diplomacy Summit 2026 convened by the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR). The resulting UNITAR white paper, Sport as a Platform for Diplomacy and Dialogue, identified Boston — alongside Barcelona and Manchester — among cities "emerging as 'sport diplomacy hubs'… investing early in relationships with future host cities, creating permanent platforms for visiting delegations, and using sport as an organising frame for innovation, education and tourism exchanges."

"The city of Boston has excelled in using sports to bring people together for as long as we can all remember. WorldBoston has been doing this work for over seventy-five years; what's new is that we're naming it, organizing it, and connecting it to the people who can act on it," said Joe Haynes, Chief Executive Officer of WorldBoston. "The welcome the world received here was the work of hundreds of thousands of Bostonians, City departments, community organizations and volunteers. WorldBoston's role is to convene that work, give it a framework, and make sure it's recognized. That's why we brought this nomination forward, and we're proud to share this award with the City of Boston."

Friendships that outlasted the tournament

The nomination documented goodwill that has since become a formal partnership. Scotland's traveling supporters, the Tartan Army, purchased a full page in Glasgow's The Herald to thank Boston for welcoming them "with open arms, open bars and open minds," and donated $15,000 to The Massachusetts Child, a charity serving Massachusetts public school students in financial hardship, along with $1,200 to Horizons for Homeless Children in Roxbury.

In June, Mayor Wu signed a letter of intent to establish Glasgow as Boston's twelfth sister city. Glasgow's Lord Provost is expected in Boston in April 2027 to sign a comprehensive agreement covering cooperation in innovation, education, sustainability, tourism and economic development.

"Sports diplomacy happens at the city level, because that's where people actually meet each other," said Cody Damon, Sports Diplomacy Envoy at WorldBoston. "A national government can sign an agreement, but it can't recreate a Dorchester watch party or a pub on Union Street where two sets of supporters end the night singing each other's songs. Boston has the density — the teams, the universities, the consular corps, the diaspora communities, the sportswear and sport tech brands, — to lead this field. This award says the model works, and the work continues."

What comes next

Boston and Glasgow are jointly planning recurring annual activations with VisitScotland and Visit Glasgow. WorldBoston's Sports Diplomacy Initiative continues under the Playbook framework through 2030, with attention turning toward leveraging Greater Boston’s dense sports ecosystem and well established international appeal.