The Atlanta Beltline is about to close its biggest gap, and the timing could hardly be better. On Friday, June 12, gates are set to come down on Segments 2 and 3 of the Southside Trail — the final 1.9 miles needed to complete a continuous, 16.7-mile paved loop through the heart of the city, per Urbanize Atlanta. Project leaders have dubbed the finished route "the U," and officials are calling its completion a historic milestone.
A ribbon-cutting and formal ceremony is scheduled for Friday afternoon. Assuming it goes off as planned, Beltline leadership and Mayor Andre Dickens’s office will have made good on a promise from early 2024: fast-track Southside Trail construction so the full connection opens before Atlanta’s World Cup matches. The gates come down just three days before Mercedes-Benz Stadium hosts the city’s first match of the tournament on Monday.
What opens Friday
The final stretch runs from Boulevard, just south of Zoo Atlanta, west to McDaniel Street at University Avenue beside the Pittsburgh Yards complex. With those 1.9 miles in place, the U links seven corridors of the eventual 22-mile Beltline oval — Northwest, Westside, Southwest, Southside, Southeast, Eastside, and Northeast — and connects 36 neighborhoods along with numerous Atlanta Public Schools facilities, per Beltline officials. Once the U is open, only relatively small gaps in and near Buckhead remain before the full circle is finished.
Construction was funded with state, local, and philanthropic dollars, alongside more than $20 million in federal contributions that Beltline leaders have described as catalytic. Police have been stationed at the future trail entrances for weeks while crews wrapped up — come Friday, the barricades finally move aside for good.
A car-free World Cup playbook
For the visitors pouring into downtown this week, the completed loop is more than a feel-good milestone — it is a genuinely practical way to experience Atlanta without a car. The 1.6-mile Westside Beltline Connector ties the loop directly to the Georgia World Congress Center campus and Mercedes-Benz Stadium, which means fans can walk or roll between intown neighborhoods and the soccer action without ever touching the Connector of the automotive variety.
The opening also pairs neatly with what is already on the downtownATL calendar:
- This weekend: the BeltLine brunch and bike loop packages the corridor into one guided morning of riding and eating.
- June 20: Atlanta Beltline Fest celebrates the trail in the thick of the World Cup, six days after the loop is complete.
Sixteen-plus years in the making
The Beltline’s buildout has taken its lumps across more than 15 years of construction, as Urbanize Atlanta notes — but a continuous 16.7-mile path linking 36 neighborhoods is the kind of people-first infrastructure few American cities can claim. For a downtown welcoming the world this very week, it is hard to imagine a better-timed ribbon to cut.
Source: Urbanize Atlanta (Josh Green, June 8, 2026).