​France’s 2-0 victory over Morocco in the World Cup quarterfinals marked the seventh and final match of the tournament held at Gillette Stadium in Foxborough. With that game, the venue can once again revert to its original identity as Gillette Stadium. The event also highlighted a shift away from natural grass toward a surface that only about eight percent of players reportedly prefer. The logistics didn’t stop there, as tape bearing the “Gillette Stadium” branding had to be removed from more than 64,000 seats, presenting another unusual but notable facet of FIFA’s hosting requirements for the World Cup. The task of stripping away those stickers translates into a significant amount of labor, depending on the rate at which the decals can be taken off—if one could remove a sticker per minute, the process would still demand more than 1,000 hours of work. In other words, it would have required more than a thousand hours to apply them at the outset.
Whether considering the cost or the profit implications for Gillette Stadium and the other ten NFL venues that hosted World Cup games, the undertaking proved worthwhile. The event has become the dominant national sporting spectacle of the 2026 summer, drawing massive attention and fan engagement across the country. The remaining five matches of the tournament were scheduled for venues in Miami, Kansas City, Atlanta, Dallas, and New Jersey. Curiously, SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles did not secure a semifinal or the final, despite the city’s high profile and the stadium’s overall quality. Some fans and commentators have criticized various aspects of Los Angeles and its facilities, but SoFi Stadium nonetheless stands out as the strongest venue among the 11 arenas used for the World Cup, arguably superior to MetLife Stadium, which hosted the championship match just eight days from now. The West Coast had its share of acclaim during the event, and SoFi Stadium’s performance has been a focal point in discussions about the best venues of the tournament. As for the others, each contributed to a memorable landscape of venues, narratives, and matches that defined the 2026 World Cup experience. For the purposes of search visibility and coverage, the narrative surrounding Gillette Stadium’s involvement, the branding removals, and the broader context of the tournament’s venues remains a central thread in the overall story of this summer’s global football spectacle.