By Evan Meikle
The 2026 World Cup is the largest international football tournament ever staged, with the planet set to pay a huge price, with estimated record breaking carbon emissions.
Breaking records both on and off the pitch, FIFA predicts 2026 to be the most attended football tournament in history, with around 6.5 million fans across the host nations.
The joy and anticipation football fans would normally enjoy in celebration of one of the world’s largest sporting events has also been dampened by a scandalously expensive match tickets and large travel distances and potential human rights violations, and is set to be most carbon polluting football tournament ever.
A bigger World Cup, a bigger carbon footprint
The expansion of the tournament size from 32 to 48 teams in this years edition is a key cause for the dramatic increase in both attendance and emissions of the 2026 World Cup. The world’s most prestigious football tournament is estimated to include over half a billion more fans from nations across the globe.
More countries, more fans, more people travelling the long journey to the far west to see their teams compete in Mexico, the US, and Canada at the highest level.
The result? The 2026 World Cup’s carbon emissions are predicted to be over double that of its predecessor, held in Qatar in 2022. This is despite the 2022 World Cup’s very high carbon footprint, due to the need of air conditioning and infrastructure challenges, with many of the stadiums built from scratch as Qatar had never previously hosted an international sporting event of such a calibre.
In 2026, the host nations have no such challenge, with all three boasting a history of sports tournaments as well as hosting large stadium events week in and week out. Despite this, experts have crunched the data and estimated that the tournament’s total carbon emissions to be in the region of 7.7 million tonnes of CO2e, much of which will be down to record high levels of spectator and team travel.
The carbon cost of intercontinental travel
The clearest contributor to this increase is, of course, the flights and travel of the millions of fans, staffers, coaches, journalists, and players each making their way to North America. Roughly 2.1 million of which are expected to be arriving from abroad.
Spectator travel, is estimated to be around 88% of the tournament’s total 2026 emissions with over 6.8million tCO2e produced from this alone.
Continental distances
As a truly global sport, what sets the 2026 edition apart from any of its predecessors aside from the increased format?
Location. This year’s setting in cities across North America positions the competition far away from many of the world’s largest footballing hubs and nations.
Whilst Mexico, the US, and Canada all have considerable populations, the amount of interest in football is much less compared to Europe, Africa, and even Asia where the majority of fans will start their journey.
For instance, the return trip of a fan from the UK would roughly cover a distance of 15,000km. While for Asian fans braving the long haul flight, a roughly 28,000km would need to be covered. This means fans are making much longer journeys resulting in considerably greater carbon emissions, with the average attendee producing four times higher emissions than in Qatar 2022.
Another clear difference from the last World Cup is the enormous geographical area used for the tournament. Even once fans finally reach their destination, travel between matches, especially as the knock-out rounds progress, will be much further than ever before.
The longest possible journey is from the Miami Stadium in Florida, the US to the BC Place Vancouver in British Colombia, Canada, with over 4,500km between the venues. This means that for a single fan attending the Saudi Arabia vs Uruguay match on 15 June followed by Canada vs Qatar on 18 June they would have had an approximately 7 hour flight to endure, producing as much as 777kg CO2 per person.
The 2026 World Cup is the first tournament to take place across multiple regions. Never before have we seen distances between rounds like this, with over 2,000km between one semi final in Dallas, Texas, and the final in the Metlife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey.
So whilst the host nations may have saved a million dollars or two on sharing the World Cup, the real cost is being paid by through record carbon emissions..
Iran’s unusual arrangements
One bizarre travel arrangement which has caught headlines recently is that of the Iran national team, who, due to a recent travel embargo of Iranian citizens following the US-Israel war against the nation, is required to enter and depart the US on every match day.
Needing to spend as little time in the US as possible, this means that Iran’s players and staff will be taking regular return flights across the border from their base camp in Tijuana, Mexico, to play their group stage matches in Los Angeles and Seattle.
So on top of the already 24,000km return journey from the Middle East, Iran will continue adding to their carbon footprint by plane hopping around North America for as long as they remain in the tournament.
Already, the emissions produced from their first trip to L.A. to play against New Zealand emitted approximately 8.09t CO2e – roughly the equivalent of over 1.8 million charges of the average smart phone.
Political tensions mean that just one out of the 48 competing team is responsible for a far higher carbon footprint than any other, amounting to roughly 1,700t CO2e in flights alone. This total is far greater than the tournament average, with each team calculated to produce mean flight emissions of 368t CO2e across the whole tournament. Both the tournament’s location and the extra emissions produced as a result of Iran’s peculiar travel demands make their carbon footprint disproportionately costly.
The plus side of the host nations
In terms of stadiums and general infrastructure, this tournament is more or less typical of the emissions generated by its predecessors.
In fact, compared to Qatar 2022, which needed stadiums and accommodation camps built from scratch, the 2026 World Cup will produce around 75,000 tonnes of CO2e less than before.
Even with the slightly higher costs in operations, merchandising, and food, it appears that the construction and facilities of the 2026 World Cup are not the primary contributors to its record carbon emissions.
Rather, they actually represent an advantage of the tournament’s location within nations that can boast long-standing and popular sporting cultures. Perhaps, something that might be noted by FIFA officials when picking future World Cup hosts.
However, as expressed by geographer David Gogishvili, these carbon savings are not enough, “all right, we are eliminating one source of negative environmental impact, but at the same time, we are increasing another”.
It appears clear that, the savings simply don’t add up.
Domestic travel and accommodation, a secondary concern
As the second and fourth biggest emission contributors to the 2026 World Cup, transport and accommodations make up less than 7% of the tournament’s total.
Again, much of the lodging taken up by fans, players, and staff predates previous World Cup editions, and, unlike in Qatar, this has been a relatively minor issue for both the hosts and the total emissions.
In fact, this edition will see around 370,000t CO2e produced as a result of accommodation, just over half that of the 2022 competition despite the massively increased attendance.
Public transport challenges
Moving between matches has been a hot topic in the build up to this tournament with fans facing challenges travelling to, and between, its host venues.
Without the major public domestic and local transport infrastructure and networks found elsewhere in the world, fans in the will encounter challenges with finding climate-friendly ways of supporting their team in match attendance. Its expected that the carbon cost of moving these fans will amount to around 160,000t CO2e, significantly up from the most more concentrated 2022 tournament. A great deal of this will likely come from domestic flights required to travel within a country that lacks any real public transport system.
A subject which has seen lots of media discourse and divided opinion is the accessibility of stadiums, with fans being banned from walking along the busy New Jersey Turnpike to attend the final at the MetLife Stadium.
As a result, those attending will be forced to choose between expensive alternatives ($150 for a train or $80 for a bus) or add another vehicle to the carbon intensive congestion on the roads and highways approaching the final stadium. The environmental cost of which we can’t yet begin to calculate.
A record summer: Unprecedented temperature patterns and impacts
So as the temperatures soar on the US East Coast this summer and the 2026 World Cup heats up, so will its carbon emissions.
With the break down of emission sources dominated by unprecedented travel, the root cause of this tournament’s troubling data has become obvious.
Whilst it is difficult to confidently place blame for this onto a single party, FIFA, as the administrators of every World Cup, must take a substantial degree of responsibility.
In fact, as Katie Gornall, a sports correspondent at the BBC asserts, “FIFA clearly does not prioritise reduction of its negative environmental influence (…) there needs to be pressure on them from media, players, associations, governments, and the public”.
Whoever bears ultimate responsibility, the 2026 FIFA World Cup will remain a record breaker in tournament carbon emissions, driven largely by its expanded format and the location of the host nations, inconsiderate to their costly carbon consequences.
One lesson to take forward into future tournaments may be the need for organisers to treat geography and sustainability as central in deciding World Cup hosts, particularly, given that almost 90% of the 2026 tournament’s estimated 7.7million tonnes of CO2e comes from spectator and team travel alone.
While the upcoming 2030 edition will be held across Western Europe and North Africa, its expansion to six host countries, including centenary fixtures in South America, risks repeating the lop-sided cause of emissions from 2026.
So as the game of football continues to globalise, the question is no longer how far it can expand but whether that expansion can remain sustainable, with the 2026 edition an important lesson for how that might be possible.
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