![\"U.S.](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Image-2026-07-01T213829.690-1000x750.jpg\")
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Michael Adkison\/Houston Public Media<\/p>\n
U.S. soccer fans celebrate at FIFA Fan Festival after the U.S. scored a goal on July 1, 2026.<\/p>\n
Days after the end of the 2026 FIFA World Cup<\/a> for men\u2019s soccer teams, Houston officials said their hosting seven matches was a major success<\/a>. Now, they’re moving forward with bidding to host the Women’s World Cup.<\/p>\n “We will make a formal bid to FIFA, along with a couple of others, and present why we think Houston should be selected as a host city for the Women’s World Cup in 2031,” Ryan Walsh, CEO of the Harris County-Houston Sports Authority, told Houston Public Media on Wednesday.<\/p>\n The 2027 Women’s World Cup will be hosted in Brazil from June 24-July 25, 2027. FIFA is expected to announce the host countries for the 2031 tournament in the coming months, but thus far only one bid has been submitted: a joint submission from the United States, Mexico, Costa Rica and Jamaica.<\/p>\n Sign up for the Hello, Houston!<\/a> daily newsletter to get local reports like this delivered directly to your inbox.<\/p>\n Houston’s bid to host is not necessarily groundbreaking: in the aforementioned countries’ bid to host<\/a> the Women’s World Cup, Houston’s NRG Stadium and Shell Energy Stadium were named as potential sites for matches. But Walsh’s confirmation signals the city’s wish to replicate the successes in hosting the men’s World Cup this year.<\/p>\n RELATED: The World Cup promised an economic bump in Houston. Hoteliers and renters say they overpromised<\/a><\/p>\n Others in the city also are capitalizing on a spiked interest in soccer. The office of Mayor John Whitmire announced Thursday that it\u2019s providing thousands of complimentary tickets<\/a> for first-time attendees of Houston Dynamo and Houston Dash games as the professional teams resume their seasons.<\/p>\n “When we went to bid for the men’s World Cup,<\/a> we were really on the outside looking in,” Walsh said. “Nobody had a negative view about Houston. It was just Houston. So, really had to tell the story of Houston and why we think it would be a good host city. Now, I think we’ve proven ourselves clearly that we’ve got a very, very successful men’s World Cup. … I think it does change the narrative of how we present a bid, at this point.”<\/p>\n There likely would be some notable exceptions, however. Most notably, the women\u2019s tournament would likely be scaled to different venues<\/a>.<\/p>\n “It’s a different size, but we want to continue that excitement,” Walsh said. “We certainly want to make sure that they understand that the collaboration is still there.”<\/p>\n Houston is also expected to make bids for other international sporting events in the coming months and years, Walsh said, including the Rugby World Cup also in 2031; the World Masters Athletics Championship, a track and field tournament for athletes 35 and older; and several opportunities for the NCAA tournaments, including Final Four and Sweet 16 games.<\/p>\n Houston has previously hosted the Final Four<\/a>, college football\u2019s national championship game<\/a>, the NFL\u2019s Super Bowl<\/a> and the World Baseball Classic<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Michael Adkison\/Houston Public Media U.S. soccer fans celebrate at FIFA Fan Festival after the U.S. scored a goal…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":358724,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[20313,135651,135652,56,58,57,66,223,8362,6486,731,154,3692],"class_list":["post-384741","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-houston","tag-2026-fifa-world-cup","tag-fifa-womens-world-cup","tag-harris-county-houston-sports-authority","tag-houston","tag-houston-headlines","tag-houston-news","tag-local","tag-news","tag-nrg-stadium","tag-shell-energy-stadium","tag-soccer","tag-sports","tag-world-cup"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/384741","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=384741"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/384741\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/358724"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=384741"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=384741"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=384741"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}