America’s turning 250, and Donald Trump is throwing the party

As the next president of the United States, Donald Trump will get to bask in the global spotlight as the country prepares to take center stage in a series of major events, with the commander-in-chief doubling as master of ceremonies.

Over the next four years, the U.S. will be home to two major international sporting competitions: the 2026 FIFA World Cup, which will take place across 11 American cities and 5 others in Canada and Mexico, and the 2028 Summer Olympics, to be hosted in Los Angeles. The nation will also celebrate its 250th birthday and is expected to once again land on the Moon — all before the next presidential election.

Republican or not, it’s about to be a good time to be an American.

“All are great opportunities for incumbent presidents to step out of divisive politics and into the role of leader and uniter of the country, in a way that has a larger pop culture appeal, well beyond the cable news,” veteran Republican strategist Michael DuHaime told Newsweek.

“For a guy who only does big and bold, this is right in his wheelhouse,” Republican strategist Spiro Amburn said of Trump.

FIFA World Cup: Summer 2026

The next World Cup, which will be the first with 48 participating teams instead of 32, will be unique in that three countries — the U.S., Canada and Mexico — are hosting, with the majority of the matches to be played across 11 U.S. cities: Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Dallas, Houston, Kansas City, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Miami, Boston and New York.

It will also be a massive opportunity for the next president to take the world stage. The 2022 Cup was viewed by some five billion people worldwide across platforms — more than half the population of the planet.

“Trump, despite his two marriages to Europeans, as we know, is an isolationist,” Barbara Perry, a presidential historian and the J. Wilson Newman Professor of Governance at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center, told Newsweek.

“In addition to crashing the NATO alliance, abandoning Ukraine, and cozying up to dictators, he will be uninterested and uninformed about the World Cup’s significance around the globe.”

Perry said she wouldn’t be surprised if some of the countries who typically participate in the tournament boycotted the Cup both as teams or spectators, though there is no evidence to suggest that would happen. The last time a country boycotted the global soccer event was in 1938, when Argentina and Uruguay declined to participate because it was being held in Europe.

America 250: July 4, 2026

Right smack in the middle of the World Cup, the U.S. will celebrate its 250th birthday, commemorating when the Declaration of Independence was signed in 1776.

Trump already revealed his plans for the milestone a year ago. Those include a White House task force called “Salute to America 250” that he vowed to convene on the first day of his second term, as well as the creation of the “Great American State Fair,” a one-year exhibition that will feature exhibitions from every state in the union, which Trump hopes will be hosted at the Iowa State Fairgrounds.

“Two hundred and fifty yeas of American independence. What a great country and we have to keep it that way,” Trump said in a video that he shared to social media in May 2023. “But that’s why as a nation we should be preparing for a most spectacular birthday party.”

The president-elect is also planning to host sporting events for high school athletes and to sign an executive order that will bring back the “National Garden of American Heroes,” a sculpture park he first proposed on Independence Day 2020 that was cancelled when President Biden took office.

“America250 is bi-partisan, non-partisan, and all-partisan, and we welcome all participation by the future administration,” Rosie Rios, chair of the America250 organization, told Newsweek. “We’ve already spanned three presidential administrations, beginning with our establishment under President Obama, its development under President Trump and followed by President Biden.”

“This celebration belongs to every American, and our dedication to making it meaningful is unwavering as we know will be the case for the future president,” Rios said.

The president-elect’s overseeing of America’s big birthday — plans of which remain in the works — will also set the stage of the 2026 midterms that will be taking place just four months later.

“The 250th anniversary will present an opportunity for America to celebrate a major milestone and point optimistically toward the future,” GOP strategist Matt Klink told Newsweek.

Democratic strategist Robert Creamer had a somewhat less optimistic take, saying that Trump’s victory, plus the likelihood that Congress will be controlled by the GOP, means that “American Democracy may have collapsed by the 250 anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.”

“There will be no guard rails for Trump at all,” Creamer told Newsweek.

Perry agreed, arguing that Trump did not prioritize freedom and equality during his first term.

“His cheering of the U.S.’s 250th birthday would ring hollow and be marked, I predict, by a Soviet-style military parade through the streets of Washington, which he wanted in his first term,” she warned.

Perry was referring to an instance in 2018, when Trump, inspired by the Bastille Day parade he attended in France a year prior, directed the Pentagon to plan a grand parade to showcase U.S. military strength. The proposed parade faced logistical challenges, including worries that the military equipment would destroy the streets of the capital, as well as concerns over its estimated $92 million cost. It was postponed and, eventually, shelved altogether.

In 2019, Trump organized the “Salute to America” event on July 4th of that year, featuring military flyovers and static displays of military equipment, including tanks positioned near the Lincoln Memorial. This event was a scaled-down version of the originally proposed parade and aimed to honor the U.S. military.

But Klink argued that as president, Trump would focus on “what makes America great and the most vital, vibrant nation in the world.”

Rios, of the bipartisan group America250, said the celebration is “not just about a fireworks show,” but “an opportunity to reflect on our past, and what it means to be the world’s oldest continuous democracy. And more importantly, it’s a chance to ask what we want to be 250 years from now.”

As part of the celebrations, the organization is holding a contest for students across the country to be part of he anniversary. America’s Filed Trip asks students in grades 3-12 to submit writing or original artwork in response to the contest’s prompt: “What does America mean to you?”

The field trips include behind-the-scenes tour of the National Air and Space Museum, sleepover at the Smithsonian Natural History Museum, a trip into the National Archives Vault on the National Mall and private tour of the Smithsonian’s National Zoo, among others.

There will also be a traveling tech expo throughout December 2025, a cultural exhibition in the winter of 2025, a flag waving ceremony in the summer of 2026, and a national time capsule that will be reopened at the nation’s 500th anniversary in 2276.

Moon Landing: Late 2026

America’s long-awaited return to the Moon, part of NASA‘s Artemis program, is also scheduled to take place in late 2026.

Earlier this year, the agency announced that astronauts would have to wait until 2025 before returning to the lunar surface, delaying the launch yet again. NASA had planned to send four astronauts late this year but pushed the date citing safety concerns with its own spacecraft. If and when it happens, Artemis will be the first time humans stepped foot on the Moon in more than 50 years.

NASA’s repeated delays have come at a cost of billions of dollars. If the date continues to be pushed further out, Artemis could be an economic headache for Trump. Government audits project the total program to cost $93 billion through 2025. Still, a return to the Moon is just the kind of TV-ready spectacle that the president-elect seems certain to appreciate.

Perry predicted that as president, Trump and “his BFF Elon Musk will take credit for the success” of the Artemis landing.

“I find it disconcerting that someone as odd as Musk is the founder of SpaceX, which has been chosen to produce the rocketry” used by the Artemis mission.

“Let’s say a tragic accident occurs, as happened in the Apollo and space shuttle programs, would Trump allow a government investigation of his buddy and chief contributor to his campaign?”

L.A. Olympics: Summer 2028

The City of Angels is already preparing to host the next Summer Olympics, which will come — as they always do — in the midst of a U.S. presidential election campaign. It will also be the first time the U.S. has hosted a Summer Games since 1996.

When L.A. secured its bid in 2017, then-President Trump congratulated the city and later pledged federal support, touting the economic boom for Southern California the Olympics would bring.

Trump will be 82 by the time of the Opening Ceremony, winding down his time in the White House and term limited from running again. L.A. could be his last chance to bask in such a large global audience.

Klink said that Trump would “relish the opportunity to welcome the world to Los Angeles” and “spend billions of dollars and thousands of people hours to ensure that America serves as a gracious host and that we put our best foot forward.”