{"id":279453,"date":"2026-02-11T23:04:09","date_gmt":"2026-02-11T23:04:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/279453\/"},"modified":"2026-02-11T23:04:09","modified_gmt":"2026-02-11T23:04:09","slug":"world-cup-2026-england-to-play-new-zealand-and-costa-rica-in-final-warm-up-matches","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/279453\/","title":{"rendered":"World Cup 2026: England to play New Zealand and Costa Rica in final warm-up matches"},"content":{"rendered":"

England will play their three World Cup group games in the United States, contesting matches against Croatia in Dallas on 17 June, Ghana in Boston on 23 June, and Panama in New Jersey on 27 June.<\/p>\n

Tuchel’s squad will travel to each location from their Kansas City base and return after each game.<\/p>\n

England’s final fixtures on home soil before they travel to the United States will take place at Wembley next month, with matches against Uruguay on Friday, 27 March and Japan on Tuesday, 31 March.<\/p>\n

England last met New Zealand – who won all five of their World Cup qualifying matches – in 1991, when the nations played two matches in Auckland and Wellington. <\/p>\n

Costa Rica, who failed to qualify for this summer’s tournament, played out a goalless draw with England in the group stage of the 2014 World Cup, while the Three Lions won the next meeting 2-0 as part of their preparations in 2018.<\/p>\n

England completed a flawless World Cup qualifying campaign in November<\/a>, achieving eight wins from eight without conceding a goal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"England will play their three World Cup group games in the United States, contesting matches against Croatia in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":279454,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-279453","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279453","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=279453"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279453\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/279454"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=279453"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=279453"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=279453"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}