BRADLEY BEACH, N.J. — D’Arcy’s Tavern is getting ready for the 2026 World Cup by doing what it already does best: packing people in to watch soccer. Tom McGill, who opened the Bradley Beach pub after leaving Wall Street, says the place will be at the center of the tournament when play begins June 11.

That makes the tavern, at 310 Main St., a likely Jersey Shore stop for fans looking for a place to watch the matches next summer. The World Cup final is scheduled for July 19 at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, putting New Jersey squarely in the tournament’s path and giving local bars a rare run of games with real stakes.

McGill did not build the business for a single summer. He retired from Citigroup in 2007 and, with two business partners, bought Barry’s Tavern before renaming it D’Arcy’s Tavern after his father, D’Arcy McGill. Three years before the 2010 World Cup, he had already traded a Wall Street job for a soccer pub on Main Street because he wanted a place devoted to the game. He said that after taking a day off in 2006 to watch the Champions League final, he could not find anywhere that felt built for global football and Major League Soccer.

The tavern’s World Cup identity was sealed in 2010. When Landon Donovan scored his last-minute goal against Algeria, a packed crowd at D’Arcy’s erupted, and McGill said the celebration was so intense that the televisions were ruined. He called them a battle scar and said, “You play on!”

That kind of scene is why McGill believes the 2026 tournament will be different in scale, not spirit. D’Arcy’s has tripled in size since then, adding an upstairs room and an outdoor area, but he also said the pub is already routinely full for English Premier League action and other sporting events. In other words, the World Cup is expected to bring a bigger version of a crowd the tavern already knows well.

Tara Schneider said the fact that the World Cup is being staged in New Jersey makes the coming summer feel especially meaningful. Pelé’s signed shirt still hangs in a frame near the front door, a reminder that the tavern’s soccer history predates the tournament by years. McGill said his father never saw the place, “unfortunately,” but that the pub still carries his name and the community-minded sports spirit D’Arcy McGill once promoted as president of Belmar’s borough council before his death in 2000.

The open question is less whether D’Arcy’s Tavern will draw a crowd than how large that crowd will be, and whether the business will need to change anything to handle it. For now, the tavern is betting that when June 11 arrives, the biggest soccer gatherings on the Jersey Shore will again be happening on Main Street.