The first thing you need to know about the nine World Cup matches scheduled to take place in Dallas—starting with a sneaky-good June 14 group-stage face-off between the Netherlands and Japan and concluding with one of two semifinals on July 14—is that, in a meaningful way, they do not take place in Dallas. AT&T Stadium, the “Dallas” World Cup host venue, is part of a sprawling sports and entertainment complex in the city of Arlington, about halfway between downtown Dallas and downtown Fort Worth. The vast Metroplex, with its dozens of independent cities and confusing-even-to-locals network of freeways and tollways and express lanes, can be a fiendishly difficult place in which to orient yourself. Drive around looking for something interesting, and you might well end up eating a rubbery ribeye at a Saltgrass Steak House or thinking the most culturally relevant place in the area is a Tom Thumb supermarket.
But with just a little preparation, you can unlock a far more fascinating place—a diverse, fast-growing, and strikingly international area that manages to both completely defy stereotypes and completely satisfy them, in all its big-hat-wearing, blond-bouffant, soap opera glory. With that in mind, here are a few of our highly personal suggestions for how you might find what can sometimes feel unfindable.
Feeding giraffes at the Fort Worth Zoo. Courtesy of Fort Worth Zoo 
The Louis Kahn–designed main gallery at the Kimbell Art Museum, in Fort Worth. Courtesy of Kimbell Art Museum
You want to take a nice stroll.
None of the cities in the Metroplex are walkable in any practical sense. Even in Fort Worth—which is significantly smaller and prettier and more manageable than Dallas—you can’t just leave your downtown hotel on foot and make a day of it. But if you have an agenda (and maybe take a short Uber ride), there are myriad escapes from the sprawl. If you’re staying in downtown Dallas, you can easily access the Katy Trail, but for more space and more-picturesque views, head out to White Rock Lake, where you can take a stroll on the 9.4-mile loop trail that, especially on its east side, can feel surprisingly wild. (While you’re there, stop off at the Dallas Arboretum and Botanical Garden.) If you’re in Fort Worth, the riverside Trinity Trails take you near many of the city’s crown jewels, from the nationally renowned Fort Worth Zoo to the punches-ten-times-above-its-size Kimbell Art Museum. (The most adventurous will go to the truly wild Great Trinity Forest, in South Dallas, one of the largest urban forests in the country, but it’s a bit of a trek for most.)
You’re craving that good Texas barbecue.
Real heads will already be familiar with some of the North Texas stars of Texas Monthly’s Top 50 barbecue list, such as Goldee’s and Panther City, in Fort Worth, and Cattleack, Slow Bone, and Smokey Joe’s in and around Dallas. But the not-so-secret fact of Texas barbecue in 2026 is that, like with patisseries in Paris or slice shops in New York, it’s now pretty hard to go wrong with smoked meats in our state. In Arlington itself, check out honorable mentions Hurtado for Tex-Mex barbecue (a 4-minute drive or an unpleasant 25-minute walk from AT&T Stadium) and Smoke ’N Ash for Tex-Ethiopian barbecue (a 20-minute drive, and definitely not a walk). Not far from Arlington, in Grand Prairie, there’s the excellent Zavala’s (another honorable mention, open every day of the World Cup). Even mini chains like Heim Barbecue and Loro Asian Smokehouse deliver excellent smoked meats.
There are two locations of Loro Asian Smokehouse in the Metroplex.Courtesy of LoroSo you want to see where the rich people live.
Dallas has a reputation for being the fanciest, flashiest, and most materialistic city in Texas, and while we’d quibble with this stereotype, there is truth to it—there’s a lot of money here. If you want to see it for yourself and can’t swing an invite to Dallas Country Club, why not luxuriate in Dallas fanciness by taking a stroll past the stately homes and heritage oaks of Highland Park, a ten-minute drive from downtown. We’d recommend a walk along the spacious and elegant Armstrong Parkway. You also won’t be too far from the very good lunch options in Highland Park and the upscale Knox-Henderson district.
Dallas is booming. To see it, go to the suburbs.
For years now, the Metroplex has been ranked as one of the fastest-growing metropolitan areas in the country, and most of that growth is happening well outside downtown Dallas and Fort Worth. But you know what else is happening well outside downtown Dallas and Fort Worth? All of the World Cup matches at AT&T Stadium! In cities like Irving and Frisco, you’ll find new housing developments rising like kudzu and serviced by sparkly new “entertainment complexes” (The Colony’s Grandscape even has an “interactive soccer bar” called Toca Social where you can kick balls at virtual zombies while nursing a pint). After a high-end virtual sports experience of your choosing, head to one of the vast array of authentic and excellent restaurants serving the area’s surging international populations and everyone else who likes good food. (South Asian spots like Simply South and Urban Tadka, both in Irving, are particularly worth a visit.)
You want to do one thing in the Metroplex that is extremely American, extremely informative, and extremely free.
Do you want to see tens of millions of dollars in cash printed in a single hour? Do you want to have your run of a highly secure federal facility, meandering through it on glassed-in overhead walkways that are suspended above the production floor? Do you want this experience to be completely and utterly free? Then go to the United States Bureau of Engraving & Printing’s Western Currency Facility, in Fort Worth, where more than half of the cash in the United States is printed. Tours are offered from Tuesday through Friday every week, and, as mentioned several times already, have no cost. You’re spending enough Benjamins on your Argentina-Austria tickets.
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