Welcome to the waymo world cup

Alphabet’s autonomous vehicle subsidiary Waymo, which currently operates commercial robotaxi services across 11 U.S. metropolitan areas, says it is fully prepared to serve attendees of the upcoming 2026 FIFA World Cup. Matchgoers will be able to book fully driverless rides to and from six of the tournament’s 16 North American host venues, with service covering stadiums in Atlanta, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, and the San Francisco Bay Area.

The month-long global soccer event, projected to draw roughly 6.5 million attendees across the continent, will serve as a major high-profile showcase for Waymo. The company currently completes around 500,000 paid passenger rides per week. That volume is negligible next to ride-hailing giants Uber and Lyft, but the figure becomes far more impressive when you account for the fact that none of these trips have a human driver behind the wheel.

Waymo has aggressive expansion plans, with plans to launch service in 20 additional markets just this year, plus upcoming international launches in London and Tokyo. Already, the Waymo mobile app is available for download in 13 countries—including Germany, the United Kingdom, India, and Japan—and supports 15 different languages. For many international travelers who have never had access to commercial robotaxi services in their home regions, this World Cup will likely mark their first ever experience riding in a fully autonomous vehicle.

The high-stakes tournament also brings the risk of highly public missteps, however. So far this year, Waymo has faced a string of unfortunate setbacks this spring. The company was forced to pause operations in multiple markets after its vehicles struggled to navigate flood-damaged streets—an issue that previously prompted a nationwide software recall for its entire fleet. In May, Waymo also suspended its highway autonomous ride service, which launched late last year to help passengers reach destinations faster. The company cited ongoing concerns over how its vehicles perform near active construction zones as the reason for the pause. Waymo spokesperson Sandy Karp notes that the firm is already working closely with local public authorities to prepare for World Cup crowds and surrounding events.

If everything goes according to plan, this first FIFA World Cup supported by autonomous vehicles will end up looking much like any other tournament. Self-driving cars are billed as a transformative technology: they promise expanded mobility for people unable to qualify for a driver’s license, a complete restructuring of travel economics, and long-term displacement of millions of human professional drivers. But when it comes to large special events, driverless vehicles face the exact same core constraints as human-driven cars. Tens of thousands of fans all want to arrive at and depart from the same venue within a narrow window of time, and there is only so much road capacity to accommodate that surge.

“There will never be a perfectly orderly process completely free of congestion,” says Adam Millard-Ball, an urban planning professor at the University of California, Los Angeles’ Luskin School of Public Affairs. “Geometrically, it’s impossible to offer front-door curbside pickup for every single attendee. The future of transportation can do many things, but eliminating traffic entirely is not one of them.”

This is the exact same problem that all other passenger vehicles face, and it is the reason Uber and Lyft operate the way they do at large venues. Since app-based ride-hailing spread across the U.S. in the late 2000s, cities and venue operators—from airports to sports stadiums—have developed systems to manage, if not fully control, on-demand transportation. In the early days of Uber, passengers would be picked up curbside right outside airport baggage claim, but most major airports now direct ride-hailing passengers to designated off-site pickup lots.

The same system applies to stadiums, and many of these existing designated ride-hailing zones are already set up to accommodate Waymo vehicles. “The City of Santa Clara currently partners with rideshare services to create designated service zones around Levi’s Stadium on event days,” Lieutenant Eric Lagergren of the Santa Clara Police Department told WIRED via email, noting that the city already uses this setup for the roughly eight annual 49ers home games each season. “These existing rideshare and public transit service zones will remain active for all 2026 FIFA World Cup matches hosted in Santa Clara,” he added. It is the same pre-established routine, just for a different high-profile sporting event.

This observation is both a common critique of autonomous vehicles and a core talking point for their proponents: a vehicle is still a vehicle, no matter whether a human or algorithm is in control. AV developers often note that first-time riders, who expect a flashy futuristic experience, quickly grow accustomed to the ride and start scrolling on their phones just as they would during any normal trip with a human driver. For years, Waymo and other robotaxi companies have also argued that their vehicles should not be regulated drastically differently than traditional human-driven ride-hailing vehicles.

That said, the bumper-to-bumper game-day congestion and long wait times that come with any major event will still remain unavoidable for autonomous ride-hailing.

Longer term, autonomous vehicles may be able to deliver small incremental improvements to event-day transportation. Millard-Ball points out that unlike traditional ride-hailing, which relies on thousands of independent contractor drivers, Waymo operates its entire fleet as a single centralized operator, making coordinated fleet management possible. For example, Waymo vehicles can be programmed to form an orderly waiting line for pickups in areas with sudden spikes in demand, he says. But this kind of coordinated efficiency often clashes with the personalized, convenient pickup experience most passengers expect: a car that waits patiently for you as you exit the stadium, or pulls up to the curb exactly when you arrive. That kind of convenience is inherently unorderly.

To catch a glimpse of what the most efficient future of World Cup-style transportation looks like, you do not need to look far ahead—just back to the proven public transit systems that already move large crowds quickly: trains and buses, both of which will serve as core transportation options for fans during this year’s tournament. Or you can look at the solution Uber itself already uses for major events: its Shuttle product, which lets match attendees reserve seats on shared minibuses traveling from stadiums after games in New Jersey, Boston, Miami, and Dallas. Welcome to the autonomous driving future.