Ivory Coast will be the World Cup team with a Philadelphia base camp, including the Union’s home

Côte D’Ivoire, as the nation is internationally known in French, will play two of its Group E games in Philadelphia: its opener on June 14 against Ecuador and its finale on June 25 against Curaçao.

Ivory Coast forward Yan Diomande (left) played soccer for an American prep school before becoming one of the world's top young prospects.Read moreThemba Hadebe / AP

by Jonathan Tannenwald

Published Feb. 17, 2026, 3:47 p.m. ET

After months of speculation, it finally became official on Tuesday that the Ivory Coast national team will call the Union’s facilities home during the World Cup.

The news wasn’t too surprising. Côte D’Ivoire, as the nation is internationally known in French, will play two of its Group E games in Philadelphia: its opener on June 14 against Ecuador and its finale on June 25 against Curaçao. In between, Les Éléphants will play Germany on June 20 in Toronto.

The winner of Group E also could return to Philadelphia for the round of 16 game on July 4 if it wins a round of 32 contest on June 29 in Foxborough, Mass.

“We welcome Les Éléphants to Philadelphia Union’s stadium as their home away from home, and promise to show them the best of what we have to offer during their time here this summer,” Meg Kane, host city executive of Philadelphia’s World Cup organizing committee, said in a statement.

The team should get an especially warm welcome from the West African immigrant community in West and Southwest Philadelphia. Ivory Coast is one of the many countries in the melting pot, and the Ivory Coast team in the former Philadelphia Unity Cup soccer tournament was a perennial title contender.

From the Union’s side of things, their WSFS Bank Sportsplex was expanded last year for moments like this. English club Chelsea got a taste last year when it used Chester as a base camp during the Club World Cup, and the Ivory Coast will be the first visiting squad to take full advantage.

“Hosting Côte d’Ivoire on our campus is a tremendous honor for the Philadelphia Union and our entire region,” Union president Tim McDermott said. “We’ve built one of the most unique sports campuses in North America specifically to support and develop world-class soccer, and there’s no better validation of that vision than welcoming recent African champions to train here.”

McDermott added that “from Chester to Wilmington to Philadelphia, this is an incredible opportunity to showcase the passion, hospitality, and excellence of our facilities and our soccer community on the global stage.”

His mention of Wilmington was intentional, even though a key detail was missing.

FIFA traditionally publishes the base hotels for teams at World Cups, even though it’s a seemingly obvious security risk. For this World Cup, when the governing body assembled the group of potential sites for base camps across the continent, each training venue was paired with a hotel nearby.

The Union’s facilities were paired with the Hotel DuPont in Wilmington, an easy bus ride down I-95 from Chester. But the hotel was not named in the announcement.

Philadelphia’s organizing committee and the Delaware Tourism Office did say on social media that Wilmington “will host Côte D’Ivoire,” and some national teams have announced the hotels at which they’ll stay.

The Union’s facility is the only base camp that FIFA offered in the Philadelphia area. The next-closest is in Atlantic City, centered on Stockton University, and no one has claimed it yet. The closest base camp that has been publicly announced is Brazil’s in Morristown, N.J., with the Seleçao playing in East Rutherford and Philadelphia.

Ivory Coast will arrive here after an 8-0-2 run through African World Cup qualifying, with 25 goals scored and zero conceded. The team also has won three Africa Cups of Nations, most recently in 2023, and reached the quarterfinals this year. But it has never gotten past the group stage at a World Cup.

Star players include midfielders Franck Kessié (Al-Ahli, Saudi Arabia) and Ibrahim Sangaré (Nottingham Forest, England) and forward Amad Diallo (Manchester United, England). Two others have ties to the U.S.: forward Wilfried Zaha plays for Charlotte FC in MLS, and forward Yan Diomande went to school at DME Academy in Daytona Beach, Fla.

Diomande also played for AS Frenzi, a team near Orlando in the United Premier Soccer League — an amateur and semipro circuit that’s effectively the fourth tier of the American game. He won the best player award in the 2023 National Finals when he helped his team win the title, and scouts started watching him there.

In January of last year, Diomande signed with Spain’s Leganés, which was in La Liga at the time. Leganés was relegated at the end of the season, but Diomande did enough to earn a $23 million move to Germany’s RB Leipzig.

He has taken off like a rocket since then, with eight goals and five assists in 21 games. Leipzig has reportedly put a $118 million price tag on him, with big-time suitors including England’s Liverpool and Arsenal and Germany’s Bayern Munich.

If Diomande plays well at the World Cup, the spotlight will grow even bigger, and Philadelphia will have had a front-row seat.