The 2026 World Cup is drawing near, starting June 11, with stadiums across Canada, Mexico and the United States hosting the popular soccer tournament. The work on one of the world’s biggest events, which is held every four years, began years ago for Michigan State’s Turfgrass Management Program.
MSU will collaborate with FIFA and the University of Tennessee (UT) to provide natural grass playing surfaces for the 2026 FIFA World Cup. Making sure 16 stadiums and 104 matches - both the highest number in tournament history - has perfect turf is both a high honor and a lot of pressure. There will be a lot of eyes on the grass, as the World Cup gathers over a billion viewers every four years.
Dr. John Rogers III, a professor of turfgrass research at MSU’s College of Agriculture and Natural Resources since 1988, emphasized the success of the turfgrass program and how it earns them opportunities like the World Cup.
“We have a reputation of delivering. That has to be the number one thing, is that we’ve been given opportunities before and we’ve been successful,” said Rogers.
The MSU turfgrass program started in 1930, which was when the first official turfgrass course was available for students. However, research for the program started over 150 years ago, in 1873. The first turfgrass research center at MSU opened in 1979 and is now over 8 acres, with 36,000 square feet devoted to athletic fields. This is a big reason why they are internationally recognized in the world of sports.
This is far from the first major sporting event that the MSU Turfgrass Program has been a part of. The team took the lead on the World Cup in 1994 as well, which was hosted exclusively by the United States - including the now defunct Pontiac Silverdome in suburban Detroit. The Turfgrass Program has also done projects for both the 2004 Athens and 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics.
Rogers has been key to the success of these projects, tasked with creating teams of students and faculty for each event. This included the 1994 World Cup, which involved then-undergraduate student John Sorochan, who is now the leading turfgrass researcher at the University of Tennessee.
“He’s the one who was actually originally approached by the University of Tennessee, and because of the size of this issue of the World Cup, immediately turned back to us at Michigan State and said, ‘Let’s do this together’”, said Rogers. “We were thrilled of course, and have been going ever since.”
This project is especially difficult and needs more than one university program working on it. Every stadium hosts multiple matches across the tournament, with two species of grass, 16 stadiums, and 88 total miles of natural sod needed to best equip these fields for the magnitude that is a World Cup match.
The turfgrass undergoes immense levels of examination and testing that starts years prior to the World Cup. Before the FIFA project, UT research and plant scientist Kyley Dickerson changed the game with the development of the fLEX device, which simulates an athlete’s foot strike on grass using sensors capable of real-time interactions.
Ryan Bearss, a research assistant at MSU’s Department of Plant, Soil and Microbial Sciences, highlighted the impact of the fLEX.
“It shoots a 3D printed foot into the ground, and once it contacts that ground it generates like 30 playing surface characteristics, that’s how we achieve our surface interactions," said Bearss. “Some of the big ones, foot displacement, cleat movement, and we’ll also look at things like rotation resistance, how much force can that grass take before it shears from an athlete.”
Unlike big events that require natural grass playing surfaces in perfect condition for a single game, the World Cup requires perfection for all 104 matches that will be played in the tournament. Each game is played with the intensity of a Super Bowl, with players pouring everything they have into the opportunity to represent their country on the world's biggest stage.
A field for big games like the World Cup goes through a lot of wear and tear, with no room for error from the Turfgrass Program when it comes to ensuring the highest quality playing surfaces.
“The need to have turf from day 1 until day 40 is important, and particularly when you think about the different environments that we’re in,” said Rogers. “So one of the things that we did was limit the number of different species, so that we didn’t have to be challenged by coming up with management schemes for several different grasses.”
However, the wide geographical range that the World Cup will cover this year, from Canada to Mexico, represents a massive challenge for the Turfgrass Program. On top of a wide range of different climates across North America, they needed to plan for multiple dome stadiums and develop a plan for natural grass that will work in all the host cities.
Mexico City, in specific, presented a challenge different from the other host cities. The Estadio Azteca required the use of two different species of turfgrass to create a new hybrid grass field due to the unique climate of high elevation (7,350 feet above sea level) and summer being the area’s peak rainy season.
“There was one stadium that was an outlier, and that was Mexico City.” said Bearss. “We’re making sure that we have unification on management practices, so a lot of our research has focused on how to manage these hybrid systems.”
For MSU, success at the World Cup will be measured by how many issues arise throughout the tournament. In soccer, every detail matters. If there is anything wrong with the field, it could be a deciding factor in the game.
“Less is more, so in other words, if nobody says anything about the turf grass, that’s perfect for us,” said Rogers. “That means we did our job because it means the game was the game, it was all decided by the play on the game. The ultimate compliment is silence.”
The World Cup this year will have a huge impact on a number of different things, from the popularity of the sport of soccer in the U.S., to the future of turfgrass in sports.
After the 1994 World Cup, MSU changed the possibilities of turf in the U.S. with their use of portable and retractable turf fields. This year, their work at the World Cup they will have another opportunity to change what is possible and introduce new advancements to turf fields.
“If our work is what I think it is, I think we’re going to provide a brand new option for new stadiums. In other words, to have natural grass and at the same time be able to pull it out fairly rapidly,” said Rogers. “This will give the player the best playing surface for performance and at the same time give the marketers the ability to maximize revenue.”