The Arlington City Council met in special session on Tuesday, May 19, 2026, from 1:32 PM to 5:10 PM, following a one-hour executive session. The meeting covered preparations for the 2026 FIFA World Cup, the annual Fire Department report, a proposed cultural district application, the workers' compensation program, financial stability updates, and reports from three council committees. No formal votes were taken; the session was devoted to discussion and information gathering.
There being no further business, the meeting was adjourned at 5:10 PM.
For Juan Carlos and his family celebrating Mexican traditions is part of their culture as an immigrant family. We emigrated to this country more than 20 years ago. Welcome back to Arlington Eats. I'm Jeremy Thomas with My Arlington TV. And on this episode, we are at an anglo restaurant and bar where your palate can experience two authentic cuisines from around the world. Those are dumplings that you can find pretty much every corner of the country in Nepal. Human. Okay, we'll go ahead and call the afternoon session of the Arlington City Council meeting to order. And perceivant to aurusio. I'm gonna move today. L'autre l'autre. Hold on, so L'humanumanseo, oochio, and L'humour,anseo, I'm not sure. Humanseo, oochenseo, and so L'humanity L'autre, L'humour. L'humour, Okay, we're gonna go ahead and call the afternoon session back to order. We're gonna move on down to 3.1. Deputy City Manager Jennifer Wickman on a World Cup update. Thank you, Mayor. Jennifer Wickman, Deputy City Manager. Um, I'm here with your um the last World Cup update that we'll give to you all before the World Cup. So um, a lot a lot to to tell, and I've uh broadened this. Um, I also have Brent Gerard here, our president and CEO of the Arlington Convention and Visitors Bureau to help me with part of the presentation. We're really taking a broad look at everything that's going on. So we're gonna talk about the scope and the schedule, some ticket sales and preparation, transportation, as well as Arlington welcomes the world and all the things that are happening around that. Talk about some of the legacy projects and then some key dates. So just to look broadly, we've got a number of this World Cup is larger than anyone we've ever had before. So you can see there are 48 participating teams. That's increased significantly from before. A total of 104 matches. So that's massive. It'll happen over three, three countries, six and a half million tickets. You can see that it's really very vast, very broad. So we're we're excited about to host many of these teams here. You can see all the different locations where these are happening. It is through Canada, the United States, and Mexico. Um so you can see all of that. Uh ATT Stadium here in Arlington will be the site of nine matches, which is also very significant. This is our schedule. We're very excited about the draw that we've gotten. Um we have um nations from Jordan, for example, which is a smaller nation, but this is the first time they've ever qualified for the World Cup. So they are super excited, and we're hoping to see a lot of excitement around that team and that nation here in Arlington. Argentina, a powerhouse, consistently in the World Cup. They're coming for two matches, which is which is terrific. And the England Croatia match, which is the third second match that'll be here. Um that's also a very good matchup, and a lot of folks are watching that. So we're excited about that. When you look at our uh schedule, uh, World Cup soccer is not the only thing happening in the entertainment district. You all can see we've got baseball season is still happening, so you can see that a lot of times the highlights in yellow are the World Cup matches, but there are a lot of Rangers Rangers games which are in between. We really appreciate the Rangers working with Major League Baseball to ensure that we don't have two of those events on the same day. So that is a huge help. You can see around the July 4th weekend and through that next week, we have about 12 days that are gonna be really um jam-packed with a lot going on.