For 39 days this summer, three national soccer teams called Montclair home for a couple days (and one more is expected in town for the final). A few miles away, the World Cup Media Center at Montclair State University put credentialed international press to work covering the tournament. And still, when people two towns over talk about their World Cup summer, they talk about crowds and coordination. When people in Montclair talk about it, they talk about who was supposed to be in charge.
Maplewood and South Orange spent the same summer proving what a plan actually looks like.
How did Maplewood plan a season-long World Cup campaign?
Maplewood’s mayor announced the town’s plans six months before the first ball was kicked. “The six-month countdown has begun,” Mayor Vic De Luca said in January, laying out watch parties, themed restaurant menus and youth soccer events months ahead of the tournament. The plan had two named organizations running pieces of it together, the Maplewood Village Alliance and the Springfield Avenue Partnership, rather than one office trying to cover the whole town alone. Nicole Wallace, executive director of the Springfield Avenue Partnership, said restaurants started their World Cup promotions as early as March, timed to qualifying matches involving Poland, Ireland and Ukraine, months before a single team touched down in New Jersey.
That structure showed up all summer. The campaign kicked off in May at Springfield Avenue’s annual MayFest, with the NYNJ Host Committee rolling its double-decker party bus through the festival crowd. By June 25, the town had shut down Memorial Park for a family movie night and a USA-Turkey watch party on a jumbotron, closing Maplewood Avenue to traffic so people could move between bars and restaurants.
Ollie described the town’s approach on the Montclair Pod. “The thing about Maplewood is kind of split into the back of Maplewood and then downtown Maplewood, and they ran, even though they’re very close to each other, they ran separate events, which I thought was kind of odd, but I think politically they’re very different. But the one at the back of Maplewood, yeah, they closed down the streets, they rolled in their normal Fourth of July holiday celebrations with the World Cup stuff. They got in touch with FIFA and had an official FIFA bus come through, which was really cool.”
That planning outlasted the group stage. Maplewoodstock, the town’s long-running community arts and music festival, received a piece of New Jersey’s five million dollar World Cup Community Initiative Grant this year, a state fund created to help towns build public events around the tournament. The festival runs July 11 and 12 in Maplewood Memorial Park with headliners including Lettuce with Slap Dragon and Anders Osborne with Meg and Jean’s Secret Family, plus a full lineup of local and cover bands both days. Mike’s own band, Bard, opens the festival at noon Saturday, after years of trying to get on the bill. Maplewood’s World Cup energy had somewhere real to land once the tournament wound down. South Orange took a different route to the same result.
What made South Orange’s World Cup watch party different?
South Orange’s planning started in public. On February 25, the village held a FIFA World Cup 2026 planning and volunteer meeting at the Baird Center, open in person and virtually, with Mayor Sheena Collum and council members Patricia Canning and Summer Jones on hand. “This is about more than just a match,” Collum said, according to Village Green. “It’s about creating an inclusive celebration where neighbors connect, support our local businesses and make lasting memories for our young people.”
That early public meeting turned into a plan that folded the World Cup into a celebration the town already had reason to hold. On June 19, South Orange combined its World Cup watch party with its Juneteenth celebration at Meadowland Park, next to the Baird Community Center. Roughly 1,000 people showed up.
The day opened at 1:30 p.m. with a community drum circle and a free youth soccer clinic for kids in second through sixth grade, led by the Columbia High School girls’ soccer team and head coach Mateo Green. Welcome remarks and a Juneteenth reading followed at 2:30, ahead of the United States facing Australia on a jumbo LED screen at 3 p.m. and Scotland taking on Morocco at 6. The Meadowland Park Conservancy ran a beer garden. Food trucks worked the crowd all day.
“This event reflects everything that makes South Orange such a vibrant and welcoming community,” Matt Gray, director of recreation and cultural affairs for South Orange Village, said in the village’s official announcement of the event. The event wasn’t built from scratch and staffed as an afterthought. It was layered onto programming the town’s recreation department already knew how to run, with a soccer clinic and a beer garden as the added pieces, not the whole structure.
That’s the real difference between South Orange’s watch party and what didn’t happen at scale in Montclair. It isn’t that one town cared more about soccer. It’s that both towns had already decided, in public, months ahead, who owned the party before the first ball was kicked.
What happened to World Cup hype in Montclair?
Montclair’s own World Cup summer is its own story, and we told it in full in The World Cup Came to New Jersey. Montclair Didn’t Own It., which covers the planning meeting that fizzled, the grant that never came through, and the leadership gap at the Montclair Center Business Improvement District (BID), the nonprofit responsible for marketing downtown.
The short version here: Lackawanna Station’s Summer of Soccer ran hard all tournament, drawing crowds of over 1,000 for big matches. The MC Hotel hosted the German, English and Norwegian national teams. Individual restaurants like Montclair Brewery and Sam’s Table built real World Cup programming of their own. What never came together was a shared, visible sense that the town itself was celebrating.
Ollie McAteer, the British content creator, also known as the British Guy Living in New Jersey, and a Maplewood resident, put it plainly on The Montclair Pod. “When you drop the ball, pun intended, or fumble the bag on something like this, you lose twice. You lose once with the immediate business impact that you could have had, and then the second time with the long term brand awareness of the town.” That gap is worth remembering, because two towns down the road show what filling it takes.
What’s left to catch before the World Cup final?
The tournament isn’t over yet. The final is July 19 at MetLife Stadium, and one of the two finalist teams is expected to stay at the MC Hotel in Montclair, according to The Montclair Pod’s own reporting. This weekend brings a full slate on both sides of the Maplewood-Montclair line. Lackawanna Station hosts its International Food and Dance Festival on July 12, with food, art and performances from countries across the tournament’s 48-nation field. The same weekend, Maplewoodstock runs July 11 and 12 in Maplewood Memorial Park, with tickets free and the full band schedule available at the festival’s website. South Orange’s watch party has already happened, but Meadowland Park Conservancy events continue through the summer for anyone who wants to see what made that day work.
Whichever town you’re in for the last stretch, the lesson from Maplewood and South Orange holds regardless of the scoreline. A plan made in January and February beats a plan made in June, and a party built on something a town already loves outlasts one built around a single hotel guest list.
Have a tip, an update, or a watch party we missed? Email us at hello@montclairpod.com.
Image credit: Lackawanna Station
