Kino Sports Complex has been chosen as the official FIFA World Cup 2026 Team Base Camp for the Iranian national soccer team, making it the only World Cup Training site in the state of Arizona.
Iran will travel to Tucson in early June before group stage matches in Los Angeles and Seattle, and Tucson will be the team's home for the remainder of World Cup play.
But beneath that announcement that excited Tucson’s soccer community last Friday, there was 18 months of work that no one knew was going on.
A year and a half ago, Cole Eckel, FC Tucson’s vice president of business strategy and development, presented an opportunity to Kino Sports Complex Director Sarah Horvath that she had no idea existed.
“I’m going to be honest, I didn’t even know FIFA was looking for these things,” Horvath said. “FC Tucson actually brought it to our attention. They had a contact through the industry and said, ‘Hey, FIFA is looking for these base camps.’”
Horvath and her team at the time were in the midst of preparing for the World Baseball Classic Qualifier, which was one of the biggest tournaments that Kino ever hosted.
FC Tucson helped Kino work its way through the FIFA process, which included putting together a bid with photographs of every inch of the 300-acre facility before submitting it to FIFA.
Kino Sports Complex hosts a sunset showdown as stadium lights rise over the pitch and players compete beneath a colorful desert sky in Tucson.
A month or two later, the answer came back: Kino qualified.
What followed was more than a year of planning meetings, contract negotiations and all the behind-the-scenes work that no one ever sees when an announcement hits the news.
“When you work with a large group like FIFA, the initial contract comes in and it just seems overwhelming,” Horvath said. “We hold events here 363 days a year. And then to see this big, massive one come in, you kind of look at it and think, is it worth it?”
The answer, every time, was yes.
What kept the Kino team going through the toughest parts was seeing the 2025 World Baseball Classic Qualifier — held March 2-6 at Kino Veterans Memorial Stadium — come together without a hitch. Seeing that hard work pay off for the community reminded Horvath of exactly why they were pushing through the FIFA contract page by page.
“We saw all of our efforts and work that we put in for that really pay off,” Horvath said. “That actually remotivated us — hey, this is worth it. This is an even bigger global event, and we want to be a part of it. The fact that Tucson just gets to have this little, tiny piece of the phenomenon that is the FIFA World Cup, we’re just so excited.”
A full house at Kino Sports Complex as supporters pack the stands, lining the rails and filling every row during a lively night of soccer in Tucson.
The contract was finalized at the end of 2025. In January, Horvath’s cell phone rang.
"My main point of contact with FIFA called me directly as the director of the facility to notify me,” Horvath said. “It was a call on my cell phone. He said, ‘Hey, guess what? You guys officially have a team."
The team was Iran, a top 20-ranked team in the world, and for Kino, it was an affirmation of what was always known to be true.
Every year, the complex has hosted professional soccer teams for preseason training. Teams from Louisville, New Mexico, Colorado Springs and France have all trained at the facility. As recently as this week, a USL League One team was training at the facility.
“We always had confidence that we are a world-class facility and that it was just a matter of time before FIFA selected us,” Eckel said. “Teams choose it every year. So we felt really good about our chances.”
When FIFA came in to evaluate Kino ahead of the World Cup, Kino Sports Complex barely had to change a thing.
“FIFA came in and we really didn’t have to do almost any improvements to the facility to make it ready,” Horvath said. “Our grounds team is second to none. They’re absolutely phenomenal.”
This week, one of Kino’s groundskeepers was set to travel to Tennessee, where FIFA brought together groundskeeping staff from all its World Cup host facilities for specialized training — a detail that says everything about the level at which Kino operates.
Iran selected Tucson for several specific reasons. Kino offered something many competing facilities could not — full exclusivity. FC Tucson temporarily relocated out of its clubhouse so Iran would have sole access to the entire complex. No other teams sharing space. No compromises.
“There are a lot of other locations where teams are having to share environments,” Horvath said. “They’re not getting exclusive use. We already have a lot of that infrastructure in place, so that was very attractive.”
Geography also played a part, with Iran’s group stage games being played in Los Angeles and Seattle, both of which are easily accessible from Tucson by short flights. The warm Arizona climate was most likely a natural draw for a team accustomed to similar conditions back home.
“Neither one of those are huge humps to get to flight-wise,” Horvath said. “Teams that were familiar with warmer environments were probably more interested in us.”
For FC Tucson, a semi-professional soccer team that has called Tucson home for 16 years, the selection has significance that extends far beyond one tournament. Eckel has never hidden the organization’s ambitions to climb back to higher professional ranks, and he sees this moment as a step on that ladder.
“Our goals are to always go back to the higher professional ranks,” Eckel said. “This is just another step along the way for us showcasing our facility as world-class and showcasing that we’ve got great relationships in the soccer world. This is a market that is ripe to have a high-level professional soccer team.”
Eckel was direct about what this moment says to the rest of our country.
“Tucson’s a sports town, Tucson’s a soccer town,” he said. “Getting that recognition on a global level feels really good.”
Few people in Tucson have watched that soccer community grow from nothing quite like Dave Ord. An assignment editor at KGUN 9 TV with over 40 years in journalism, Ord has supported FC Tucson since the club’s founding in 2011, volunteered with the organization, and has attended eight World Cups around the globe.
“I would have never, before FC Tucson came around, thought we’d have a club professionally play here,” Ord said. “We’ve had MLS preseason training here; we’ve even had an international match between Denmark and Canada. And now this is like the cherry on top to say a World Cup training camp is going to be here.”
Ord pointed out just how rare this moment truly is. Of the 48 cities across the United States hosting World Cup training sites, many are sharing facilities between multiple teams. The actual number of truly exclusive host cities, he said, is closer to 40.
“Just to have that feather in our cap adds one more thing to how great soccer has become here and how great FC Tucson has pushed us forward,” Ord said.
But for Horvath, this moment represents something much deeper — a recognition of 25 years of hard work by Pima County in a facility that many questioned when it was first constructed.
“The investment over the past 25 plus years at Kino is still paying off,” she said. “When Kino was built, there were lots of questions about it and a significant amount of money was invested by the county. It’s nice to see that 25-plus years later, we’ve been able to keep up the facilities.”
The same fields Iran’s World Cup players will train on this June are the same fields Tucson’s children play on every single weekend.
“Your kids are out here playing sports and they’re using the exact same fields that these professional athletes have access to,” Horvath said. “We’re such a high-end facility, but the community still has the ability to have access here and to still play on these great fields.”
As for what the public can expect when Iran arrives, details are still being worked out. There is a possibility of a limited community training session in early June, though it requires approval from the team and FIFA security officials.
FIFA is also rolling out a youth health and fitness program in conjunction with the World Cup. Residents are encouraged to follow Pima County’s social media pages at facebook.com/pimaplay and Pima.gov for the latest updates.
For Ord, the arrival of Iran’s national team in June means something that transcends soccer entirely.
“Football is a game that brings the world together more than pretty much anything else,” he said. “There have been lots of places that have had conflicts yet still gotten through playing in the World Cup. In 1974, East Germany and West Germany played with a wall between them. So, you see what soccer can do to bring us together. Maybe sometimes it’s only for a little bit, but it’s worth it.”
In June, the World Cup comes to Tucson. And Tucson has been ready for a long time.
