Waymo’s High-Stakes FIFA World Cup Test: Driverless Robotaxis Step Onto the Global Stage

Alphabet-owned robotaxi operator Waymo, which currently runs commercial driverless ride services across 11 U.S. metropolitan zones, says it is fully prepared to support crowds during the upcoming North American FIFA World Cup. Tournament attendees can book fully autonomous trips to 6 of the competition’s 16 host venues, located across Atlanta, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, and the San Francisco Bay Area.

A Massive Real-World Milestone for the Self-Driving Firm

Spanning more than a month and projected to draw roughly 6.5 million total visitors across the continent, the high-profile global tournament will serve as Waymo’s largest ever public showcase to date. The company already reports 500,000 paid weekly rides across its existing service zones — a figure that is still modest compared to giants like Uber and Lyft, but far more notable given every one of those trips has no human driver behind the wheel.

Waymo has aggressive expansion plans lined up, with launches scheduled in 20 additional U.S. markets this year alone, and international debuts in London and Tokyo on the near-term roadmap. Its mobile app is already available for download in 13 countries including Germany, the U.K., India, and Japan, with support for 15 different languages. For many international travelers who have never had the chance to ride robotaxi services in markets like China, the World Cup will mark their very first experience with fully driverless transport.

High Stakes, and Very Public Risks

The high visibility of the tournament could also expose very public operational missteps for the AV developer. Waymo has already faced a string of setbacks through the first half of the year: it was forced to pause services in multiple markets when its self-driving vehicles failed to navigate flooded city streets, a problem that earlier prompted a nationwide software recall. In May, the company also suspended its highway robotaxi feature — which had cut down travel times for riders since late 2023 — citing concerns over how its systems behave near active construction zones. Waymo spokesperson Sandy Karp confirms the firm is now coordinating closely with local municipal authorities to prepare for World Cup matches and all associated large-scale events.

But even if every technical kink is fully resolved, the tournament will not deliver a congestion-free sci-fi utopia for riders, urban planning experts note.

“There’s never going to be a perfectly orderly process with no congestion,” says Adam Millard-Ball, a professor of urban planning at UCLA’s Luskin School of Public Affairs. “Geometrically, you’re not going to be able to have ‘front door’ pickups for everybody.” No fleet of vehicles, no matter how advanced their autonomous systems are, can create extra road capacity out of thin air — and the rules of crowd transport for major events apply to driverless cars exactly the way they apply to human-driven ones.

Fitting Into Existing, Well-Proven Event Playbooks

This dynamic is exactly why Waymo will not be rewriting the rulebook for World Cup transport: it will be using the exact same pickup and dropoff frameworks that U.S. cities developed for ridehailing services 15 years ago. After Uber and Lyft first entered the U.S. market in the late 2000s, venues including airports and stadiums moved to phase out chaotic, unregulated curbside pickups, directing ridehail users to dedicated, reserved lots to clear up sidewalk and curb space.

Most of those dedicated ridehail pickup zones now welcome Waymo robotaxis, too. “The City of Santa Clara currently collaborates with rideshare services to create service-area locations around Levi’s Stadium during event days,” Lieutenant Eric Lagergren of the Santa Clara Police Department told WIRED in an email, referencing the regular 8 annual San Francisco 49ers NFL home games. “The rideshare and public-transportation service area locations in Santa Clara will remain active for all FIFA World Cup 2026 matches being hosted in the City of Santa Clara.”

This dynamic is both a common critique of autonomous vehicles and a core talking point for AV industry proponents: a car is still a car, no matter if a human or a software system is in control. That framing supports Waymo’s years-long lobbying push for equivalent, non-discriminatory regulatory treatment relative to other ridehail services, rather than restrictive special rules for autonomous fleets. It also signals the technology is maturing past its gimmick phase: first-time robotaxi riders quickly stop marveling at the empty driver’s seat, pull out their phones, and act exactly as they would on any regular taxi ride.

Incremental Efficiency Gains, No Revolutionary Overhaul

While fully driverless fleets cannot eliminate tournament traffic entirely, Waymo’s centralized operational model does carry unique advantages over peer ridehail platforms. Unlike Uber and Lyft’s decentralized network of independent contractor drivers, Waymo controls every vehicle in its fleet, and can coordinate their movements at scale. Millard-Ball notes the company can orchestrate its robotaxis to form neat, orderly queues at high-demand pickup zones, eliminating the common sight of dozens of cars looping the block waiting for fares.

That fleet-wide coordination, however, comes with tradeoffs: the orderly, systemized flow removes the casual luxury many riders expect, where a driver can circle the block patiently as they finish exiting a venue, and pull up to the curb exactly when they walk outside.

To move millions of fans efficiently at scale during the tournament, both Waymo and legacy ridehail platforms are already leaning on well-established mass transit models: trains and buses will bear the brunt of high-volume fan transport, and Uber has already rolled out its dedicated Shuttle product, which lets match attendees pre-book shared minibus seats for post-match trips departing venues in New Jersey, Boston, Miami, and Dallas. The future of event transport, it turns out, is not a radical sci-fi reboot — just familiar, well-tested systems, with a few small, incremental upgrades.