World Cup 2026: From cafes to fan zones, football fever sweeps New York and New Jersey

On Steinway Avenue in Queens, home to a large Arab diaspora, supermarkets, hookah cafes, and coffee shops are packed with Moroccan and Egyptian fans (Azad Essa/MEE)

Bicycle delivery workers from Burkina Faso take a brief pause between shifts in Harlem, using their phones to follow football matches (Azad Essa/MEE)

An Egyptian fan watches the World Cup from a custom-built audio-visual setup on a Queens sidewalk (Azad Essa/MEE)

In New Jersey, where one of the largest Haitian diasporas in the United States has taken root, fans have come out in full force for their team (Azad Essa/MEE)

At World Cup 2026, questions of immigration are impossible to separate from the tournament (Azad Essa/MEE)

Some grocers in Astoria turned their storefronts into impromptu World Cup watch parties, drawing fans onto the streets (Azad Essa/MEE)

Egyptian fans flood Steinway Avenue in Queens after their team’s historic victory over New Zealand (Azad Essa/MEE)

Senegalese fans have travelled from across the United States to watch their team in action in New York (Azad Essa/MEE)

In towns like Paterson, New Jersey, the tournament has brought cafes to life on the weekend as they turn into community hubs (Azad Essa/MEE)

Darrell Etienne, brother of Haitian forward Derek Etienne Jr, attends a watch party in Paterson in honour of the Haitian community in the town (Azad Essa/MEE)

With a large Brazilian community in New Jersey, several other immigrant communities have also adopted the team for the tournament (Azad Essa/MEE)

In Astoria, cafes have been overflowing with patrons, especially during matches involving teams from the Middle East (Azad Essa/MEE)