Soccer fans are increasingly watching preparations for the 2026 World Cup through their fingers. The most popular sporting event on the planet is awash in controversy, whether it’s the eye-watering ticket prices, the question of Iran’s participation while the president of one of the host countries threatens war crimes against it, or the role that US Immigration and Customs Enforcement may or may not play in policing the event. And yet, lost in the political pyrotechnics is a fiasco that carries as much long-term peril as any: the tournament’s staggering contribution to runaway climate change.
The 2026 World Cup is not only the most politically combustible tournament in modern history, but it is also on track to be the “most polluting” World Cup ever, with total greenhouse gas emissions hitting nearly two times the historical average. Scientists conservatively project that the tournament will generate around 9m tons of carbon dioxide equivalent. Air travel comprises approximately 7.7m tons of this carbon budget, and more than four times that of the average for tournaments held between 2010 and 2022. The researchers note that the worst-case upper estimate for air transport is about 13.7m tons of CO2. That may sound bad, but that’s just because World Cup emissions have never been worse.
Much of this can be chalked up to Fifa own goals. It chose to increase the number of participating teams to 48, up from 32 at the 2022 World Cup in Qatar. It also selected three host countries – Canada, Mexico and the US – that encompass a massive geographical expanse. Even if the US train system wasn’t in relative shambles, the distances that many fans need to travel make less carbon-intensive forms of transportation impractical.
Some may point out that the 2026 World Cup’s estimated 9m tons of CO2 pales in comparison to the 5.9 billion tons of CO2 that the US spewed into the air in 2025 alone. While that is true, it’s equally true that to passively allow Fifa to willfully trash the environment is to succumb to greenwashing: the duplicitous practice of talking a big green game, but failing to follow through with meaningful sustainability measures. Fifa is dashing in the wrong direction at a time when campaigners are racking up a slew of climate litigation wins against unrepentant greenwashers.
Let’s be clear: Fifa has long been a shameless purveyor of greenwashing. Exhibit A: the 2022 World Cup in Qatar. Ahead of the tournament, Fifa President Gianni Infantino implored soccer fans “to raise Fifa’s green card for the planet”, by which he meant “record a short message” explaining “what you will do to preserve the environment and save our world” and post it online. This anodyne drivel was part of Infantino’s “aim” to make the 2022 World Cup “carbon neutral”.
In reality, the Qatar 2022 World Cup was a carbon bomb in sporty form. It necessitated more than 1,000 daily inbound and outbound flights, used an energy-intensive desalination system to purify water and relied on largely bogus carbon-offset schemes. Even the grass seeds for the manicured football pitches were flown in from North America on climate-controlled airplanes.
Somehow, the 2026 World Cup is even worse. Given that increased greenhouse gas emissions cause premature deaths, scholar Tim Walters argues that this World Cup is the deadliest sporting event in history, a sign of Fifa’s “abject misanthropy”.
Jaw-dropping absurdities abound. At the 2022 World Cup, stadiums were located relatively close together, linked by metro and buses. At the 2026 World Cup, the Bosnia and Herzegovina squad – and their fans and families – will have to travel more than 5,000km (3,144mi) from Toronto to Los Angeles to Seattle. Their training camp is in Salt Lake City, meaning they’ll tack on additional carbon miles. Algeria will rack up about 4,800 km (2,972 mi) journeying from Kansas City to San Francisco and back. Czechia start in Guadalajara before heading to Atlanta and then Mexico City, notching more than 4,500km (2,811mi).
Lacquer on top of all that a World Cup sponsorship that looks like it was concocted in a greenwashing laboratory. In 2024, Fifa signed a four-year partnership deal with Aramco, the state-owned Saudi energy behemoth that is the largest corporate greenhouse gas emitter on earth, responsible for more than 4% of all emissions since 1965. More than 100 professional female footballers, including some of the biggest names in the game, signed a letter condemning the partnership, citing the environmental impacts as a serious problem. As Canada national team captain Jessie Fleming put it: “Aramco is one of the biggest polluters of the planet we all call home. In taking Aramco’s sponsorship, Fifa is choosing money over women’s safety and the safety of the planet.”
At this summer’s World Cup, player safety is also in jeopardy thanks to extreme heat brought on by rampant climate change. The National Weather Service is warning that every single region of the US will experience temperatures that exceed the historical averages for the two months in which the tournament will take place. A Guardian analysis found that “high levels of heat and humidity will impact the ability of teams to perform on the field”, with the wet bulb globe temperature (WBGT) – a measure that includes not only air temperature but also direct sunlight, humidity and wind speed – likely to cause problems. The analysis suggests that “26 matches at the World Cup will be played when the temperature is at or above 26C (78.8F) WBGT” – a threshold beyond which Fifpro, the global players’ union, says cooling breaks are necessary.
This follows an academic study that arrived at the even more dire finding that 14 out of 16 host cities are likely to experience average WBGTs that exceed 28C (82.4F) in June and July. Fifpro has argued that a 28C WBGT merits possible suspension of the match. All this, the researchers assert, raises “the potentially serious concern of extreme heat for the health of players and match officials at the 2026 Fifa World Cup”. While three of the cities most exposed to possibly dangerous levels of heat – Houston, Dallas and Atlanta – have air-conditioned stadiums, the energy needed to power that cooling doesn’t exactly help climate change.
One of the authors of that study, Dr Madeleine Orr of the University of Toronto, told the Guardian, “What is perhaps most absurd to me is the lack of commonsense preparations by event organizers to keep people safe in extreme weather conditions. Hot and humid weather is predictable in North American summers. So are wildfire smoke in the West and hurricane-force winds driving big storms in the East.” She added, “The only interest is in protecting athletes on the field, with basically no consideration for fans, staff, the media and volunteers working in the stands or on the streets.”
Fifa has taken steps to mitigate heat. Many games in hotter cities will kick off in the evening, away from the hotter parts of the day. Fifa also announced last December that each half of each match would feature a three-minute “hydration break” regardless of weather conditions. To the surprise of no one, Fifa also ruled that television broadcasters can fill two minutes and 10 seconds of each break with commercials, so long as they don’t cut away within 20 seconds of the referee’s water-break whistle and return 30 seconds before play resumes.
Fifa named the problem of climate change in its promotional materials but only pretends to address it. A “green card for the planet”? More like a big middle finger.