The 2026 FIFA World Cup semifinals will be decided on Colorado grass.
Not on home soil, since neither Denver nor Colorado at large hosted any World Cup games (again).
But the Final Four in soccer’s biggest tournament will still have a Centennial State touch.
Both semifinal matches will be played on grass grown in and shipped from Colorado specifically for this year’s World Cup.
Platteville’s Green Valley Turf sod company provided the grass for 2026 World Cup pitches at the Atlanta, Houston and Dallas sites.
Atlanta and Dallas are the semifinal host sites, while the New York/New Jersey area hosts the championship match July 19.
Here is the 2026 FIFA World Cup semifinal schedule:
- July 14 (3 p.m. ET/1 p.m. MT): Spain vs. France, Dallas/AT&T Stadium
- July 15 (3 p.m. ET/1 p.m. MT): England vs. Argentina, Atlanta/Mercedes-Benz Stadium
All three venues (Mercedes-Benz Stadium, NRG Stadium and Arlington’s AT&T Stadium) that used the Colorado grass have full-air retractable roofs. World Cup matches in those stadiums are played fully indoors due to the summer heat.
That necessitated grass grown in a cool climate to match the cooler indoor temperatures.
“It seems a little strange that the grass is coming all the way from Colorado, but those buildings will be climate-controlled at 70 degrees throughout the whole tournament, so they needed a cool-season grass which thrives in our environment that’s near impossible to grow closer to where the venues are,” Green Valley Turf owner Joe Wilkins III told CNN.
The family-owned business (founded in 1962) grows sod, turf and grasses, among other sod-related services, at its locations in Platteville and Littleton.
The grass for these World Cup venues was grown at the Platteville location and shipped off in May. Each pitch is 82,000 square feet and nearly 2 acres, requiring 24 semi-trucks to haul the grass to each venue.
The grass is a proprietary mix of Kentucky bluegrass and perennial rye and was developed through a $5 million FIFA-funded research partnership between Michigan State University and the University of Tennessee.
Combined, the three sites with Colorado-grown grass played host to nearly a quarter (24 out of 104) of the total 2026 World Cup matches.
Chris Abshire covers high school and community sports for the Coloradoan.
This article originally appeared on Fort Collins Coloradoan: 2026 FIFA World Cup semifinals will be decided on Colorado grass
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