The 2026 FIFA World Cup has reached its final stages, with Spain, Argentina, England and France set to compete in the final and the match for third place.
Hosted across Canada, Mexico and the United States, the tournament is the largest in FIFA history, featuring 48 teams, 104 matches and 16 host cities. The expanded format has delivered record-breaking crowds, but it has also increased travel demands for fans and pushed the tournament’s estimated carbon footprint to new highs.
Here’s how the 2026 World Cup compares with previous editions.
The 2026 World Cup has already set a new attendance record.
The World Cup has set a new attendance record, with 6.25 million fans attending the tournament so far, according to FIFA. Stadiums were 99.7 per cent full on average, with over 65,000 spectators attending each game.
The tournament has already surpassed the previous all-time attendance record of 3.5 million, set during the 1994 World Cup in the United States. The expansion to 48 teams, 104 matches, and larger stadiums has helped drive the record-breaking turnout.
This World Cup breaks records for number of attendees, even before the quarter-finals.
Note: 2026 attendance figures are through the Round of 16.
Source: FIFA.
The surge in attendance has also translated into significant stadium food and beverage sales. During the group stage alone, fans purchased more than 2.8 million beers, 300,000 hot dogs, and nearly one million bottles of water, according to FIFA.
Food preferences varied across the three host countries. Beer and chips were the top sellers in Canada, hot dogs were the most popular in the United States, while pizza and French fries led stadium sales in Mexico.
Ticket prices have reached record highs
The 2026 FIFA World Cup has also become one of the most expensive tournaments for fans to attend.
When tickets first went on sale in December, prices ranged from US$140 (S$181) for a Category 3 group-stage ticket to US$8,680 for the final, according to Al Jazeera. By the April open sales phase, a Category 1 ticket for the July 19 final had risen to US$10,990, according to an analysis by Business Insider.
Industry experts attribute the higher prices largely to the tournament’s hosting model. With the majority of the 104 matches taking place in the United States – mature sports and entertainment market with strong consumer demand – FIFA has priced tickets at a premium compared with previous World Cups.
Category 1 ticket prices for World Cup final games adjusted for inflation
Source: Analysis by Business Insider
According to FIFA, the most requested matches as at June 29 were Portugal v Colombia in Miami, the 2026 World Cup Final in New York/New Jersey, and Mexico v South Korea in Guadalajara. The top ticket-buying countries were the United States, Canada, Mexico, England, Germany, Colombia, Brazil, Argentina, Australia and France.
FIFA’s budgeted revenue for the 2026 World Cup is expected to be the highest in history.
FIFA expects to generate up to US$13 billion in revenue across its 2023-2026 financial cycle, with the 2026 World Cup accounting for the largest share. If achieved, this would represent the highest budgeted revenue in its history and a substantial increase over previous World Cup cycles.
FIFA reports its financial results in four-year World Cup cycles, rather than annually, because the men’s World Cup is the organisation’s primary source of income.
FIFA’s revenue for the current cycle is budgeted to reach US$13 billion
Source: FIFA
Fans had to travel farther between stadiums than ever before.
Unlike past editions hosted in a single country, the 2026 World Cup spans 16 host cities across Canada, Mexico, and the United States. As a result, fans were likely to travel thousands of kilometres between matches, often requiring domestic or international flights to follow their teams through the tournament.
By comparison, the 2022 World Cup in Qatar featured the shortest travel distances in tournament history, with all eight stadiums located within a relatively small geographic area. Even the larger tournaments in Brazil (2014) and Russia (2018) involved less travel than the 2026 edition, making this year’s World Cup the most logistically demanding for travelling supporters.
How far would fans have to travel to watch all of their team’s matches?
Note: Distances are calculated based on the direct (straight-line) path, representing the shortest distance between the origin and destination. They do not account for actual driving or flight distances.
The tournament’s vast geographic spread puts the 2026 World Cup on track to generate record-high carbon emissions.
The 2026 tournament is also expected to have the highest carbon footprint in the competition's history. The biggest contributor is projected to be spectator travel, with millions of fans flying between host countries and cities across Canada, Mexico, and the United States.
Global carbon accounting platform Greenly estimates that the tournament could generate 7.8 million tonnes of carbon dioxide.
Source: 2026 estimates by Greenly; 2026 emissions reported by FIFA
That is roughly equivalent to the annual emissions of 1.7 million cars, making it the most polluting World Cup ever staged, according to academics and campaigners, driven mostly by the vast distances that teams, fans and media will travel across the three-country, 16-city format.
The sheer geographical spread of the tournament makes it more carbon-intensive than Qatar, which was criticised for building seven new stadiums. Qatar’s emissions reached 3.6 million tonnes of carbon dioxide, according to FIFA’s report.