Two things defined summer in Miami this year, and they happened at the same time. The World Cup came to Hard Rock Stadium, and the city recorded the hottest summer in its history. If you spent June and July in a queue for a Metromover car in a heat advisory, you lived both at once.
Here is what actually happened, and — because a fair amount of it is still going — what you can still catch.
The World Cup came to Miami Gardens
Hard Rock Stadium, rebranded Miami Stadium for the tournament, hosted seven matches between 15 June and 18 July. Worth saying plainly, because the shorthand gets it wrong: the stadium is in Miami Gardens, a city that incorporated in 2003 and has spent the summer asking people to use its name.
| Date | Match | Result |
|---|---|---|
| 15 June | Saudi Arabia v Uruguay | 1–1 |
| 21 June | Uruguay v Cabo Verde | 2–2 |
| 24 June | Scotland v Brazil | 0–3 |
| 27 June | Colombia v Portugal | 0–0 |
| 3 July | Argentina v Cabo Verde | 3–2 (aet) |
| 11 July | Norway v England | 1–2 (aet) |
| 18 July | France v England (third place) | 4–6 |
FIFA put the seven-match total at 449,157 spectators, 99.5% of capacity, averaging 3.86 goals a game. The send-off was the best of them: England led France 4–0 at half-time in the third-place match, France scored four in the second half, and England won 6–4 in front of a sell-out 64,478. Kylian Mbappé’s two goals took him to 22 career World Cup goals, an all-time record. Earlier, in the Round of 32, Lionel Messi became the first player to reach 30 World Cup appearances.
The final itself was not here — Spain beat Argentina 1–0 at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey on 19 July.
Downtown got the other half of it. The FIFA Fan Festival ran at Bayfront Park from 13 June into the first week of July, across more than 436,000 square feet with a 10,000-seat amphitheatre. The Host Committee put total attendance above 600,000. Miami-Dade County reported roughly 25% of match spectators using transit, with 836,000 Metromover trips during the festival — about 185% above normal. Anyone living in Brickell or Downtown already knew that without being told.
It was the hottest summer Miami has recorded
This is not a figure of speech. From the National Weather Service’s own summer summary:
- 100°F at Miami International on 18 August — tying the all-time record high set on 21 July 1942, and only the second time since 1895 that Miami has officially hit triple digits. Homestead reached 102°F.
- 85.6°F average for the summer, 1.9°F above normal, tying 2023 as the warmest on record.
- 83 days at or above 90°F against a normal of 64, including a 56-day streak from 11 June to 5 August.
- Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach both had their hottest summers outright, in records going back to 1913 and 1888.
- It was dry as well — rainfall ran 5 to 10 inches below normal, with extreme drought over the southern Everglades.
One quieter piece of good news: no tropical system affected South Florida all summer. As of the first week of September, no hurricane had formed anywhere in the Atlantic — five named storms, none of them reaching hurricane strength, and none of them here.
What is still on
Miami Spice runs through 30 September. The 25th edition, more than 300 restaurants, at $40 for brunch and lunch and $50 or $65 for dinner. New this year is a Miami Spice Reserve tier from $95 for chef-driven and tasting-menu seatings that never fitted the three-course format. Three weeks left, and the good tables at the marquee rooms go first.
Basquiat: Figures, Signs, Symbols opened at Pérez Art Museum Miami on 25 June and runs all the way to June 2027 — ten masterworks from 1982–85 drawn from the Kenneth C. Griffin Collection, the first public showing from that collection and the largest Basquiat presentation Florida has had. PAMM also opened John Baldessari: The End of the Line on 20 August. If you want the one that is about to disappear, Carlos Cruz-Diez’s Chromosaturation closes 27 September.
At ICA Miami in the Design District, where admission is free, Harmony Korine’s Perfect Nonsense — the filmmaker’s first US museum exhibition — runs through 18 October. The Bass in Miami Beach opened three shows across the summer: Abraham Cruzvillegas in July, Sarah Zapata in late July, and Gabriel Rico’s mural at the end of August.
In Wynwood, the Gibson Garage Miami opens on 10 September at 2660 NW 3rd Avenue — 8,000 square feet, 500-plus instruments and a performance stage. And the Kaseya Center’s autumn starts immediately: Rosalía on 14 and 16 September, Gorillaz on 18 September, Soda Stereo on the 20th.
And on the housing side
Two things happened this summer that matter if you are looking for an apartment here.
Rents came down. Miami’s median asking rent was $2,277 in June, down 2.6% year over year, per Realtor.com’s survey of the 50 largest metros. Nationally that was the 35th straight month of year-over-year declines. Miami remains expensive; it is just less expensive than it was.
Overtown got 616 new apartments. Atlantic Square opened at 777 NW 2nd Avenue in June — a 36-storey mixed-income tower where 320 units are workforce housing and 40 are affordable, alongside 256 at market rate. It sits three blocks from the Historic Overtown/Lyric Theatre Metrorail station, and the garage façade carries a four-storey work by the artist Marielle Plaisir.
September in Miami is not autumn. But the stadium has gone quiet, the heat advisories have stopped, and there are three weeks of Miami Spice left. Take the win.
Figures in this piece come from the National Weather Service Miami summer 2026 climate summary, FIFA’s own match reporting, the Miami World Cup Host Committee, Miami-Dade County, the Greater Miami Convention & Visitors Bureau and Realtor.com. Where a number is an organiser’s own claim rather than an independent count, we have said so.