Psst, it's almost time for the World Cup. Here are your crib notes before matches kick off in Boston

Editor's Note: This is an excerpt from a World Cup special email to WBUR's daily morning newsletter, WBUR Today. If you like what you read and want it in your inbox, sign up here.

It's almost time for the World Cup!

The beautiful game's biggest competition comes to Boston(ish) this summer, with seven matches scheduled for Gillette Stadium in Foxborough. But don't call it that; FIFA, the group that organizes the World Cup, won't call any of the World Cup stadiums by their corporate names. Instead, they're calling the venue down in Foxborough "Boston Stadium."

If you're a soccer n00b, all of this can feel intimidating. But don't fret: We're here to help you navigate the tourney, the teams coming to town, the traffic, the ticket prices and anything else we can think of.

This is the first of three bonus emails WBUR will send you all about the World Cup. (You’re getting this because you’re signed up for WBUR Today or the Weekender. Your regularly scheduled programming will be back soon.)

Today we'll focus on the basics and some logistics. In a couple of weeks, your old newsletter pal Nik will hit your inbox with a little tea on the teams and players coming to town — and there's always tea in the soccer world. (Real Madrid alone could be its own Real Housewives season.) Then, we'll check in after the tournament's group stage to discuss how things are going and what's next for Boston as teams proceed to the elimination rounds.

We are about to kick off the 2026 men's World Cup. The games will be played in 16 cities across the U.S., Canada and Mexico, and there are more countries participating than ever before. Forty-eight national teams have been sorted into 12 groups. The four teams in each group play each other once, like a super-mini regular season. In total, 32 teams move on to the win-or-go-home portion of the tournament: the top two finishers in each group, plus the eight third-place teams with the best group-stage records.

This tourney is for the boys. The women's World Cup is next summer in Brazil.

Since England is the birthplace of modern soccer, the Brits got to name everything. If you're struggling to follow along with a sport that’s vocab was born outside of the states, we're here to help with a handy glossary of soccer terms. Is it exhaustive? No. Is it exhausting? Only if someone forces you to read it all in one sitting.

We’ve got a pretty solid slate!

Three of FIFA's top-eight-ranked clubs (France, England and Morocco) will play a group-stage match at "Boston Stadium." Norway brings Erling Haaland, one of the world's elite strikers. Scotland's fans — AKA The Tartan Army — are rowdy and love to travel. And while Ghana, Iraq and Haiti don't have the best odds to make deep tournament runs, they do have legions of fans in Massachusetts eager to root them on.

Here's the schedule for the Foxborough matches:

It's not easy; most of the tickets have been snapped up. Nor is it cheap. The most expensive World Cup final tickets were selling for nearly $11,000, and that's before they're resold in the price-jacking world of the secondary market.

Group stage tickets aren’t quite that bad. But according to the website ticketdata.com, the average lowest price just to get into a game in Foxborough is about $600. And that’s for the nosebleed sections. In fact, Boston has the fourth-most expensive tickets of the 13 U.S. and Canadian host cities.

Scroll below for more on why tickets are so expensive.

Have you ever seen the movie "Trains, Planes and Automobiles?" Getting 60,000 fans to and from Foxborough on match day may resemble that '80s-tinged ordeal. If you drive, beware: FIFA has set some pretty extensive security perimeters around the stadium. Just 5,000 parking spots are available for the matches, as opposed to the 20,000 usually open for a Patriots game. Reserved spots for the group stage matches will run you $175. It jumps to $220 for the knockout rounds. And if you can't snag a spot next to the stadium, there are off-site lots, but who knows what they'll charge.

The train is an option, and the MBTA has committed to getting up to 20,000 fans to each match. But that comes with a pricey caveat: The ticket is $80. Which is a lot! The T's big boss, Phil Eng, has defended the fare, because they’re running a lot more trains than the regular $20 Patriots game day service. Also, folks who buy the World Cup train ticket can ride the entire commuter rail system that day.

There's always the bus: Boston 26, the local World Cup organizing group, has set up a charter bus system to bring fans to the matches. But that'll run you $95 — more than the train, which gets to skip the traffic on I-95 and Route 1. A group of Scottish fans crossing the pond for the tournament decided to rent some school buses to get to Gillette, which actually will cost them far less per person.

Fortunately, a lot! The biggest free draw is the Boston fan festival on City Hall Plaza. Scheduled for June 12-27, the details are still a bit scant but organizers say you can watch the matches on a big screen while enjoying local food and music. Boston has also set aside funds to support neighborhood block parties.

Several cities and towns have announced their own watch parties and festivals. Nik has a rundown of those here.

There are also several outstanding soccer bars in Greater Boston, which will set aside their club loyalties during the World Cup. If you aren't one for alcohol, several cafes in the area are also soccer-mad, and will pop the matches on their TVs.

And while cable is very much not free, 70 of the 104 matches will be broadcast on Fox, aka Channel 25 in Boston. (The other 34 are on FS1.) There's a whole schedule here.

Those are the basics. If you want to learn more, you can catch up on all of WBUR's World Cup coverage here. Even if you aren't a soccer fan — and even if you're appalled by costs associated with this event — the World Cup is still one of the last global events where the predominant vibe is joy. Given the overall mood around us, why not give it a shot?