This is one of the biggest sports weekends the metro area has seen in years. The FIFA World Cup arrives at MetLife Stadium on Saturday with Brazil vs. Morocco, and the roads around the Meadowlands are going to feel it. Sunday brings the NYC Pride March up Fifth Avenue. The Jazz Age Lawn Party runs both days out on Governors Island. 5 Seconds of Summer plays Madison Square Garden Saturday night, and the Liberty host the Mystics at Barclays on Sunday afternoon.

If you're coming in from Nassau or Suffolk, here's what's worth the trip — and what the parking and traffic actually look like at each one.

FIFA World Cup at MetLife — Brazil vs. Morocco

Saturday, June 13 | 6:00 PM | MetLife Stadium, East Rutherford, NJ

The World Cup is here, and the New York–New Jersey region's first match is a big one: Brazil vs. Morocco at MetLife on Saturday evening. MetLife hosts eight matches across the tournament, including the final on July 19, but Saturday is the opener and the whole area is bracing for it. Expect fans flying in from all over the world, sold-out hotels, and a stadium running at full World Cup security and crowd volume.

If you have tickets, this is a once-in-a-generation thing to see in your own backyard. The match is the easy part. Getting to and from East Rutherford on the biggest soccer day this region has ever had is where the planning matters.

Getting to MetLife from Long Island: This is the hard one all weekend. MetLife sits across two rivers from Nassau and Suffolk, and on a normal NFL Sunday the parking lots and the routes in off Route 3 and the Turnpike are already a grind. For a World Cup match with international crowds, expect road closures, staged parking, and security perimeters that push general traffic far from the gates. A car service runs you straight through from Long Island, drops you as close to the controlled entry as the day allows, and is waiting on the agreed-upon pickup point after the final whistle rather than leaving you in a global crowd hunting for a rideshare with surge pricing maxed out. For a date this big, the ride is the part you don't want to improvise.

NYC Pride March

Sunday, June 14 | 11:00 AM | Fifth Avenue, Manhattan

The NYC Pride March steps off at 11am Sunday and runs down Fifth Avenue from 44th Street toward the Village, capping a weekend of Pride events across the city. It's one of the largest Pride celebrations in the world, and it draws hundreds of thousands of people into Midtown and Greenwich Village for the day. The energy is unmatched, and the surrounding blocks turn into a street festival from late morning well into the evening.

Whether you're marching, watching, or meeting friends downtown, the day is about being in the middle of the city, not parking on the edge of it.

Getting to the March from Long Island: Pride means widespread street closures across Midtown and the Village all day, and that makes driving yourself into a guessing game about which avenues are open and which are barricaded. There is effectively no good parking anywhere near the route on march day. A car service drops you at a clear corner just outside the closure zone and picks you up at an agreed spot once you're ready to head home, which is the only sane way to handle a day when half of Manhattan's streets are shut to traffic. You enjoy the day; the driver deals with the detours.

Jazz Age Lawn Party — Governors Island

Saturday, June 13 & Sunday, June 14 | Governors Island

The Jazz Age Lawn Party returns to Governors Island for its 21st year, and it's one of the most charming days on the New York calendar. Think 1920s dress, live swing bands, Charleston dance contests, antique cars, gourmet picnic spreads, croquet, and vintage photo booths spread across the island's lawns with the harbor and skyline behind it. It runs both Saturday and Sunday, and people genuinely commit to the period costumes.

It's a full day out and a real change of pace from an arena or a stadium. The catch is the ferry.

Getting to the Governors Island ferry from Long Island: The island is reachable only by ferry, and the main boats leave from the Battery Maritime Building in Lower Manhattan. That means driving into the Financial District, where parking is scarce and expensive on a weekend, and then making a specific ferry departure. A car service drops you right at the ferry terminal for your boarding window and picks you up there when you're back on the mainland, which takes the parking problem and the missed-ferry risk off the table. For a day that depends on catching a boat on schedule, that timing is the whole game.

5 Seconds of Summer at Madison Square Garden

Saturday, June 13 | 8:00 PM | Madison Square Garden, 4 Pennsylvania Plaza

5 Seconds of Summer headline the Garden on Saturday night. A Saturday arena show at MSG is one of the tougher logistics nights in the city even without a World Cup match across the river — the venue sits on top of Penn Station, the surrounding blocks lock up before and after the show, and 20,000 people pour out onto Seventh and Eighth Avenue all at once at the end.

If you've got tickets, the show is the easy call. The trip in and the scramble out are the parts worth thinking through ahead of time.

Getting to MSG from Long Island: The Midtown Tunnel drops you into the West 30s, but the streets around Penn Station are among the most clogged in the city on a concert night, and the nearby garages run $50 and up with long exit lines after the show. A car service drops you near the Seventh Avenue entrance and stages the pickup a block off the crowd, so you skip both the parking garage and the surge-priced rideshare scramble. For a night that ends near 11pm, having the car already waiting is the difference between home by midnight and home well after 1. We cover the details in our Long Island car service guide.

New York Liberty vs. Washington Mystics — Barclays Center

Sunday, June 14 | 3:00 PM | Barclays Center, Brooklyn

The reigning-interest Liberty host the Washington Mystics at Barclays on Sunday afternoon. A 3pm tip makes this the easy family play of the weekend — afternoon game, out before the evening, no late drive back to Suffolk. The Liberty have built a real following over the last couple of seasons, and a Sunday matinee in Brooklyn is one of the more relaxed pro-sports outings within reach of Long Island.

It pairs well with an early dinner in the neighborhood before heading home.

Getting to Barclays from Long Island: Barclays sits right at the Atlantic Avenue hub in Brooklyn, which is convenient by transit and a headache by car — the intersection of Flatbush and Atlantic is one of the busiest in the borough, and the garages around the arena fill up and price up on event days. A car service drops you at the Flatbush Avenue entrance and picks you up after the final buzzer, so you avoid the Atlantic Avenue parking crunch entirely. For an afternoon game with kids, being able to leave on your schedule instead of crawling out of a garage is worth real money.

The Long Island Traffic Picture This Weekend

The single biggest factor this weekend is the World Cup. Saturday's match at MetLife pulls international crowds and heavy security into the Meadowlands, and that ripples across the whole metro area — the Turnpike, the tunnels, and the bridge approaches will all run heavier than a normal June Saturday. Pair that with a Garden show the same night and the Pride March shutting down Midtown on Sunday, and this is a weekend where driving yourself to any of it means fighting closures and parking at every stop.

It's also Hamptons season, so the Sunrise Highway and Montauk Highway eastbound are heavy Friday and Sunday evenings, and JFK and LaGuardia are running at full summer-travel volume with World Cup arrivals stacked on top. If anyone in the house is flying out of JFK or LaGuardia in the next few days, build in extra time and expect company on the road.

Request a quote and we'll have a car ready for whatever the weekend looks like.

Best Things To Do in NYC This Weekend — June 13–14, 2026