World Cup fever is coming to North America, and Seattle is preparing for an influx of global visitors unlike anything the city has seen in decades. The U.S. Travel Association projects that tourists attending the tournament across the United States, Canada and Mexico will spend nearly $7.5 billion, and host cities are racing to capture their share of that attention.
Pike Place Market, the Space Needle and MoPOP are already on every itinerary. But the stop that keeps surprising visitors — including the ones who thought they had Seattle figured out — sits a mile and a half south of downtown at 1400 S Lane St.
Thrift tourism is having a moment
A shift is underway in how travelers think about shopping. According to the Tripadvisor 2026 Trendcast, visitors in cities from Berlin to Tokyo are trading brand-name retail for community-driven spaces: indie boutiques, flea markets, antique shops and thrift stores. The trend has data behind it. Research cited by Arival in 2025 found that shopping and market tours now rank as the second most popular tour type globally, with 30% of travelers booking them. Google searches for “market tours” surged 184% year over year.
Travelers are not hunting for the same souvenirs they could order online. The American Express 2026 Global Travel Trends Report found that 76% of global respondents believe the skills and experiences gained on a trip outlast any material purchase. The buy becomes secondary to the story.
The world’s largest Goodwill
Evergreen Goodwill’s flagship store in Seattle is the largest Goodwill in the world. At roughly 70,000 square feet, with approximately 10,000 items added to the shop floor every single day, it operates at a scale that makes the superlative feel earned rather than promotional.
Nothing on the shelves looks the same twice. The inventory cycles constantly, shaped by what the city donates and what shoppers pull from the racks hours after it arrives. That unpredictability is exactly what experiential travelers are looking for in 2026.
A global workforce in a global city
The flagship’s team members come from more than 20 countries, including the Philippines, Ethiopia, Peru, Eritrea, Congo, Somalia, Morocco, Mexico, Angola, Korea and Colombia. For visitors arriving from those same corners of the world, that detail is not incidental. It is part of what makes the stop feel like Seattle rather than a generic retail experience.
Goodwill’s mission connects directly to local job training and education, which gives the flagship a civic weight that most retail destinations cannot claim. Visitors are not just browsing; they are participating in something the city actually runs on.
What World Cup visitors take home
The American Express report found that 82% of respondents said learning something new while traveling creates a more memorable experience. Thrift shopping, at its best, is exactly that: a hunt, an education in a city’s material culture and a one-of-a-kind find that no other traveler will carry home.
Seattle has always been a city that reinvents things rather than discards them. For the millions of visitors arriving this summer with stamped passports and open schedules, the world’s largest Goodwill offers something the Space Needle cannot: a reason to come back with empty bags.
Mandy Applegate is a luxury travel and fine dining journalist who has covered destinations across 47 countries, with a focus on high-end experiences and distinctive adventures. She is a co-founder of Food Drink Life, where she writes about travel, food and culture for a global audience. Her work is distributed through the Associated Press wire and appears in major U.S. outlets, including NBC, the Chicago Sun-Times, the Boston Herald and the Daily News.