No More Nevers
- Jason Longshore
- 3 hours ago
- 4 min read
For families with sensory sensitivities, the FIFA World Cup has always been out of reach. At Mercedes-Benz Stadium, that changes this summer.
Ben Sheffield could hear his son before he finished his first sentence.
"I've got a beautiful little boy inside that room who's very energetic," Sheffield said, pausing as the sounds of an excited kid drifted out of the sensory trailer behind him. His son, who was diagnosed with autism in 2022, is the reason Sheffield has spent the years since becoming an advocate for families navigating the same challenges in the Atlanta area. He lives in Cobb County. Born and raised in Georgia. The kind of dad who shows up.
"I'm just so grateful for organizations like KultureCity," he said, "for allowing us to be able to get out, enjoy ourselves in environments like these in such a successful and easy place."
That scene played out on Global Accessibility Awareness Day, May 21, at a media event hosted by FIFA at Mercedes-Benz Stadium. What was being unveiled was not a future promise. It was already built, already working, already welcoming a kid from Cobb County.
What It Looks Like on the Ground
The mechanics of sensory inclusion at a stadium sound simple once you hear them explained, and that simplicity is part of the point. KultureCity, the Birmingham-based nonprofit behind the initiative, designed a system built around what fans can actually control in a loud, unpredictable environment.
Every fan with sensory sensitivities will have access to a sensory bag, available at no cost and cleared to leave with them at the end of their visit. Inside: noise-reducing headphones, three types of fidget tools, strobe-reduction glasses, and a visual cue card. When the lights at a night match get overwhelming, the glasses do not turn off the stadium. They just make it manageable. When the tension of extra time becomes too much, the fidgets give hands something to do.
For moments when a bag is not enough, sensory rooms are located inside every host stadium. Each one is designed to support six of the eight senses, built as a darker, calming environment where people of all ages can step away from the noise, reset, and go back to enjoying the match. Groups go in one at a time, ten minutes to decompress. Ten mobile sensory trailers, branded by Hisense, are distributed across the full tournament footprint for use in fan experience areas and outside the gates. Trained KultureCity volunteers are stationed at each location.
Mercedes-Benz Stadium's relationship with KultureCity predates the World Cup. The stadium already has a permanent sensory room inside the building as part of a long-standing partnership with the nonprofit. The mobile trailers and expanded programming for the tournament build on that foundation rather than replace it.
Uma Sherbaceva, KultureCity's executive director, was direct about the scale of need. One in four people has some form of sensory sensitivity. That includes autism, anxiety, PTSD, dementia, Parkinson's, migraines, and ADHD, as well as rarer or undiagnosed conditions that simply make crowds, lights, and noise feel impossible to filter. The World Cup, by design, is all of those things at once.
Beyond the in-stadium infrastructure, KultureCity and Hisense are running a program called Make the Nevers Possible, built around a straightforward idea: too many families have a list of experiences they have written off as impossible, and that list does not have to be permanent. The program accepts referrals for individuals with sensory sensitivities or invisible disabilities and connects them with experiences they have never been able to access. For the World Cup, that means actual match tickets for families or small groups of two to four people. Travel and accommodations are the family's responsibility, but the match experience itself is provided.
For Georgia families, the relevant date is July 7 at Mercedes-Benz Stadium, a Round of 16 match. Applications are open now at kulturecity.org.
More of Atlanta Gets to Be in the Room
Bev Carey, Atlanta's FIFA host city director, framed the initiative in terms that extend beyond accommodation. Between five and sixteen percent of people experience sensory overload significant enough that it has historically kept them away from major sporting events entirely. The World Cup coming to Atlanta is not just a civic milestone for the people who would have come anyway. It is an opportunity to bring the game to people who have been locked out of live sports for most of their lives.
That is a different kind of legacy than a new stadium or an economic impact report. It is a question of who gets to be part of the moment when the world's attention turns to this city. For Sheffield and his son, the answer arrived before the first whistle, on a Thursday afternoon in May, with three weeks to go until the tournament begins and Atlanta's first match on June 15.
A Historic First on the Right Day
The timing was not accidental. FIFA chose Global Accessibility Awareness Day, observed annually on May 21, to mark the milestone. The initiative represents the first time in FIFA World Cup history that sensory-inclusive spaces will be present at every host venue, across all 16 stadiums, three countries, and 104 matches.
Hisense, a long-standing FIFA partner, is providing both product and funding support for the initiative, including the mobile sensory trailers and the Make the Nevers Possible match ticket program. The partnership with KultureCity puts implementation in the hands of an organization that has been doing this work in sports venues across North America for years.
For FIFA, the day marked a public commitment to accessibility that goes beyond mobility access. Sign language broadcast options and tactile tech boards for visually impaired fans are also part of the tournament's accessibility framework. The sensory inclusion program is one piece of a broader effort to define who the World Cup is actually for.
The answer, increasingly, looks like everyone.
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