Beyond the Match: Delivering a World-Class FIFA Fan Festival™ Experience in Kansas City July 23, 2026
Fifty acres. Nineteen days. Hundreds of thousands of fans. That’s what it took to turn the National WWI Museum and Memorial grounds into one of the country’s largest free summer events.
Creating a successful FIFA Fan Festival™ requires more than giant screens and room to gather. The vision for FIFA Fan Festival™ Kansas City was never just about scale. It was about holding two things at once: an experience big enough to match the world’s largest sporting event, and one that still felt unmistakably like Kansas City, down to details like the KC Heart Gateway, a massive entry installation framing the National WWI Museum’s tower beyond it.
To bring that vision to life, KC2026 brought together a consortium of industry-leading partners. Populous led the project, overseeing project management, venue planning and development, and brand design. TEG Sport handled ticketing, marketing, and front-of-house operations.
Van Wagner Productions was the team behind the scenes making it all run: site operations, vendor management, production and entertainment, and VIP hospitality, the connective tissue that turned a nationally significant landmark into a world-class destination for fans from around the globe.
FIFA Fan Festival™ Kansas City By The Numbers
- 19 operational event days
- Hundreds of thousands of attendees
- 50+ acre festival footprint
- 250+ semi-trucks required to build the event
- 42+ vendors and suppliers
- 11+ FIFA Commercial Partners and Host City Supporters
- 100+ artists, bands, DJs, and performers on stage
The Work Nobody Sees
None of Van Wagner’s work was visible to attendees, and that was the point. The festival grounds functioned less like a single event site and more like a small city, distinct zones for the Live Stage, Legacy Lounge, Premium Garden, and sponsor activations, each running independently but wired together as one operation. Behind the scenes, the team coordinated 42-plus vendors, 11-plus FIFA Commercial Partners and Host City Supporters, more than 250 semi-trucks of equipment, and hundreds of skilled craftspeople from IATSE Local 31, turning 50 acres into that fully functioning temporary city.
Mallory Cage, Director of FIFA Fan Festival & Events KC2026, felt that reliability firsthand:
“I never worried that things were not being handled and I never had to follow up on an ask I made. This level of comfort changed the way I could handle and experience everything else occurring, and I am so grateful for that.”
Where the Festival Came Alive
At the center of it all sat the Live Stage, 60 feet tall and 140 feet wide, anchored by a 50-by-25-foot LED screen, with the Live Plus canopy, roughly the size of an NFL football field, stretched alongside it to give fans shade and gathering space through the summer heat. Together, they became the emotional center of the event, where fans celebrated and Kansas City showed its culture to the world
Behind that stage was the talent to fill it. Working with local vendors, Van Wagner booked more than 100 artists, bands, and DJs across the run, while a 15-plus person production crew show-called, stage-managed, and programmed every talent, video, and audio element in real time.
Hospitality as Experience
The Legacy Lounge, designed by Van Wagner with Renegade Design and Infinite Structures, felt less like a temporary build and more like a permanent one, a custom two-story viewing patio, a 6,000-square-foot climate-controlled club, and premium finishes throughout. The Premium Garden offered a more accessible upgrade with dedicated entry, private bar service, and premium viewing, its own reason to stay a little longer.
The Finale
Leadership challenged the team to give fans a reason to stay after the final whistle. In under 48 hours, they built an entire closing set from scratch: local artists performing stadium anthems for 30 minutes, capped with fireworks. It’s the moment Keli O’Neill Wenzel, CEO/President/CFEE at O’Neill Events & Marketing, calls the one that stood out most.
“We pulled together the concept, the artists, and the marketing pieces on the fly, and Van Wagner was right there at every step,” Wenzel said. “They quickly advanced all the artists involved and produced a two-minute wrap-up video that played at the close of the final match. The moment was electric. Fans loved it, and the production was absolutely flawless. That’s what this team does. They find a way, fast, and make it look effortless.”
A Legacy Beyond the Final Whistle
None of that work stayed on the festival grounds. Across the full World Cup tournament, Fan Festival content generated over 700 million video views and is approaching 35 million engagements.
A 50-acre festival, dozens of vendors, 100-plus performers, and a hospitality program built to permanent-venue standards, all running on logistics fans never saw. That invisibility was the goal: build something people could lose themselves in, and let the people who trusted Van Wagner with it feel that trust was well placed.
About Van Wagner
Van Wagner is a leading sports advertising and entertainment agency, with global expertise in live events, sponsorship sales, multimedia rights and aerial advertising. Van Wagner creates, advises and sells on behalf of world-class teams, leagues, brands and properties. An innovator in the sports and media business, Van Wagner is a global leader in high-impact broadcast visible signage throughout the NCAA, MLB, NBA, and international soccer, as well as collegiate multimedia rights and production of the world’s biggest sporting events. For more information, visit www.vanwagner.com.
