World Cup crowds smash records across Seattle
Published 11:45 am Tuesday, June 30, 2026
The Seattle FIFA World Cup Commission announced that during the group stage matches, record crowds attended watch parties, took public transit and just traveled to the city in general.
Ahead of the first ever knockout round match in Seattle on July 1, between Senegal and Belgium, Seattle crowds have been on another level.
Sound Transit and King County Metro reported that over 1.1 million passengers took their modes of transportation for just the first two matches of the group stages. Nearly 300,000 bus boardings occurred in a single day and a light rail record of 280,000 occurred on June 19 when the U.S. Men’s National Team took on Australia.
Three of Sound Transit’s top five days occurred during the World Cup.
The four official Seattle Fan Celebrations took on 750,000 fans from June 15-27. Waterfront Park made history on its own, with 625,293 total visits from June 11-25 with a total of 539,865 unique visitors. On Juneteenth, Waterfront Park saw 84,767 visitors which was the highest since the park opened in 2025.
The Seattle-Tacoma International Airport saw three of its busiest days of travel ever. In the last 10-days approximately 605,000 people traveled through SEA over the last three days (June 26-29). Over the last three weeks there have been 1.2 million passengers.
Getting around the city from watch party to watch party required tens of thousands of Lime bikes and scooters. Lime riders took more than 83,000 trips on June 19 , the highest ridership day in the city ever. Across the group stage, there were more than 675,00 Lime trips.
Senegal and Belgium, who are being hosted by the city of Renton, play in the round of 32 on July 1 in the penultimate World Cup game in the Emerald City. The final game will be on July 6, where the winner of that Senegal and Belgium tie will play the winner of the USMNT and Bosnia and Herzegovina.
