Officials still tweaking field at AT&T Stadium for first World Cup match — PHOTOS
The first 2026 FIFA World Cup match in North Texas comes Sunday when Japan and the Netherlands meet at AT&T Stadium (known as Dallas Stadium for the tournament).
Ian Craig, who is helping oversee the pitch installation at the stadium, talked Wednesday about where the field is now and how ready it is for live play.
“There’s still more work to do. It’s where I want it to be at the moment,” he said. “As a turf professional, I’m never fully satisfied. I’ve seen where we needed to be at the moment, and we’ve still got a lot of work to do before Sunday. You know, we’re still going to cut this probably 10 or 11 times and make it look as good as we possibly can between now and Sunday.”
Craig explained the details of the alterations made to the field, which has grass that was grown and installed.
“It’s about 4 1/2 feet above the NFL field,” he said. “What we’ve done is install a football pitch. We’ve got gravel, we’ve got pipe drainage, we’ve got sand, we’ve got sub air system, we’ve got sod. It’s a hybrid sod, so we had the sod grown in Colorado and transported down here to Texas, and then what we call a hybrid reinforcement. So it’s a giant sewing machine, effectively, that stitches artificial fibers in to reinforce that sod, so that we get the best possible playing surface that we can.”
While many of the indoor stadiums needed grow lights for the grass, the decision by AT&T Stadium officials to hang their grow lights wound up being a boon to Craig and his team, he said.
“What’s unique about here in Dallas is that the general manager, Tod Martin, had the idea to rather than wheel these lights in and wheel them out, to mount them from the roof,” Craig said. “... It saves us a lot of time and effort in bringing these lights in and out. We’ve got a full pitch of coverage, and it’s effectively a case of switching them on and switching them off, rather than wheeling them in and out.
“The venue here have been very, very accommodating. They’ve really gone above and beyond to try and make sure that we can deliver what we need to deliver.”
Craig also talked about the challenge of keeping the pitch pristine for the nine matches being held at the stadium
“Nine games is the most of any venue here at the World Cup,” he said. “It’s never been done before, nine games in one venue at a World Cup, so it’s a huge challenge for us. There’s a lot of work gone into this pitch from the FIFA side, from the research done at University of Tennessee and Michigan State University, the contractor Precision Turf who built the pitch, and then the venue themselves.
“There’s a lot of work going into this up until this point. However, we’ve still got an awful lot of work to do to make sure that we can maintain that in elite level conditions throughout the competition.”
Craig and his team will face their first test when Japan and the Netherlands kick off at 3 p.m. Sunday.
