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Trump Announces the 2026 FIFA World Cup Draw Will Be Held at the Kennedy Center, Aug. 22, 2025

August 22, 2025 · The White House · 1:07:20

Embedded from the source channel — never re-uploaded. Watch on YouTube

What happened

President Donald Trump announced in the Oval Office on August 22, 2025, with FIFA President Gianni Infantino beside him, that the draw for the 2026 FIFA World Cup will be held at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. “On December 5th of this year, the 2026 FIFA World Cup draw will take place at the Kennedy Center… right here in Washington, D.C.,” he said. “It’s a tremendous honor to bring the global event and this incredible group of people and these unbelievable athletes, the best athletes in the world, to the cultural center of our nation’s capital.” Infantino had flown in from Italy for the announcement; the World Cup trophy was on hand, and the President joked about the venue’s name — “some people refer to it as the Trump-Kennedy Center, but we’re not prepared to do that quite yet.”

The announcement doubled as a briefing on the Washington crime intervention: the President said the capital had seen “zero murders in the last week since we’ve done this, that’s the first time in memory that that’s happened,” put the overall crime number “down 87 percent,” credited the National Guard and police, and warned Mayor Bowser to “get her act straight or she won’t be mayor very long, because we’ll take it over with the federal government.”

Why it matters

Placing the World Cup draw at the Kennedy Center puts the tournament’s global kickoff ceremony in the capital five months before the 2026 World Cup across the United States, Canada, and Mexico — and the President explicitly tied the venue choice to his case that Washington is safe again under the federal intervention.

Scoreboard candidate

Scoreboard candidate: the 2026 FIFA World Cup draw at the Kennedy Center on December 5, 2025, as announced August 22, 2025 — a dated, checkable event flagged for the scoreboard editors; the entry itself remains review-gated.

Sources: The White House, “President Trump Makes an Announcement, Aug. 22, 2025” (official upload, embedded above). All figures and characterizations as stated by the President at the announcement.