The Orange Bus is coming

The beginning has begun.

The excitement in the air is becoming palatable, as evidence of the city’s biggest global sporting event is appearing everywhere.

Bars and restaurants will soon be adjusting schedules to stay open later. The $62 million light rail extension to the Riverfront opened on May 18. Construction of the big FIFA FanFest watch party at Liberty Memorial is officially underway, with themed weekly programming beginning June 11. Construction to reconfigure Arrowhead as a soccer stadium is on time and expected to be ready for the first match on June 16, according to a KCTV5 report.

But one of the tournament’s more noisy, head-turning sports spectacles –  the iconic Netherlands’ team orange bus – doesn’t get here until June 25. However, this international soccer crowd is a fan favorite, and it arrives just in time for the match between the Netherlands and Tunisia, according to the Royal Dutch Football Association. 

The 40-year old rehabbed London double decker bus has been showing up at Netherlands matches since 2004, leading thousands of revelers to the Dutch team’s games.

The bus has been in Houston since May 3. On June 14, it will be leading the march for Dutch fans in Dallas ahead of the Netherlands matchup against Japan before heading to KC.

If there was any doubt about the level of party fun that the tournament will bring to our city, the arrival of the orange bus and the resulting fan walk from the Power and Light district up to the FanFest should put an end to any speculation.

The Kansas City version of the march promises to be a huge, loud, cheering, singing crowd of thousands of orange-clad local and international soccer fans, complete with three Netherlands team members and a wildly outfitted team super fan Daniel Oordt.

Oordt has been an orange bus rider for years, stemming from a trip he took in 2015 to Kazakhstan to watch the Dutch team there. “On the plane to Kazakhstan, I ended up meeting some of the Dutch super fans that are part of the bus organization,” he told KCM. “I got to know them very well. From that point on, I haven’t missed a single match.”

Oordt says the bus was bought in 2004 initially as a joke. “Now it’s kind of gotten totally out of hand,” he says. “They’ve got a whole committee and chair people on it now, and a good sponsorship deal. That bus leads up the march procession, and then behind it will be the Dutch Federation that has already sold well over 5,000 tickets for the 2026 tournament. Two years ago, for the march leading up to our 2024 match in Dortmund, Germany, it got out of hand with 110,000 people behind the bus.”

The Dutch Orange Bus passion and team fandom runs deep, it’s part of the country’s collective consciousness, Oordt says.

“These soccer rivalries are built not on the city that beat us in a playoff series two weeks ago or two years ago, creating this rivalry,” Oordt says. “These rivalries are really built on history, wars, inter-political conflict, and that pure, almost hatred in a certain way between certain countries. That passion really drives a certain type of energy between these matches that you’re not going to find in any other sport. There’s a lot of history and a lot of background to every single match that’s played at the World Cup.”

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