The South American championship is being played in the U.S. for the second time in eight years and eight of the 14 venues, including Inglewood's SoFi Stadium, also will play host to games in the 2026 World Cup. That makes the tournament an important trial run.

"We will always look at every event as a test for the next things that's coming up," said Otto Benedict, senior vice president for facility and campus operations at SoFi Stadium. "Copa will allow us to have an international fan base that's coming through the building, so we're going to understand how those guests come, how they perceive the building."

SoFi, which will stage eight games in the World Cup, will host two Copa group-stage matches: Brazil's tournament opener with Costa Rica on June 24 and Mexico's second game, with Venezuela, on June 26.

Benedict said the stadium's Matrix Turf surface will be covered with a carpet of natural grass, a procedure that will be repeated for the World Cup, but the retractable bleachers in the corners will remain in place, leaving the pitch slightly narrower than FIFA will require for the World Cup.

"We're still going to have opportunities to learn," Benedict said. "All those things are data points that will be collected."

The seven other Copa stadiums staging World Cup matches will conduct similar trials.

Copa América will be a World Cup test for the USMNT as well

The 2026 World Cup will be a defining moment for the U.S., and the Copa might give an indication how the national team will be defined.

Is the U.S. one of the world's top soccer-playing nations, as U.S. Soccer would like you to believe, or is it a pretender, a team that struggles against top competition and is undeserving of being ranked 11th — ahead of Colombia, Germany and Uruguay — in the latest FIFA rankings?

As a World Cup host, the U.S. — along with co-hosts Mexico and Canada — will not have to go through qualifying for 2026, making Copa the most challenging tournament it will face in the next two years.

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