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Photograph Courtesy of Wink/Solomon
Centennial Olympic Park
Thirty years after the 1996 Summer Olympics, Centennial Olympic Park is once again a hub for a global sporting event in Atlanta. The official FIFA Fan Festival is held in the park for 16 days of the month-long tournament. With capacity for 15,000 local fans, families, and international visitors, the event offers a taste of the tournament’s excitement, whether you have in-stadium tickets or not: this includes live games on a big screen, local food vendors, a crafts market, and a playground with games for kids. General admission is free to reserve for individual days; VIP ticket packages cost up to $325.
“The FIFA Fan Festival really is that epicenter of global soccer culture,” says Atilla Meijs, executive producer of Atlanta’s Fan Festival. “We want to show what this city and state have to offer to visitors while also making locals feel like their family.”
Centennial Yards
Giant screens on lawns aren’t the only way to watch World Cup games. Now, in Atlanta, you can also spectate in a LED dome called Cosm. The much-anticipated “shared reality venue” is located in Centennial Yards, the development at the site formerly known as the Gulch, and it is downtown’s newest residential and entertainment complex to serve the crowds of Mercedes-Benz.
Cosm is a mini version of the Las Vegas Sphere, with a 12K-LED display for games, music, and other live events. Cosm’s complex also encompasses The Hall (a sports bar) and The Deck (a rooftop venue with a view of Mercedes-Benz Stadium).
Entertainment Districts
Crowds of thousands of people at Centennial Olympic Park may be overwhelming for some people; several other downtown “districts” offer slightly less-packed alternatives. The Center, formerly the CNN Center, opens its food hall and atrium days before the World Cup begins. The redevelopment is blocks from the stadium, and an atrium space of 24,000 square feet features Atlanta’s “largest” full bar.
Near several downtown hotels and Peachtree Center, 207 Peachtree is another development opening this summer. The historic building at the corner of Peachtree Street and Andrew Young International Boulevard has live music, a sports club with a panoramic TV, and a rooftop lounge. The South Downtown neighborhood also hosts an open-air food festival, Smorgasburg Atlanta, with local vendors every Saturday.
This article appears in our June 2026 issue.
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