One of the defining stories of the 2026 World Cup is how extreme heat and weather could shape the football itself. Beyond player and fan safety, there’s the question of whether games can be played at full intensity, whether teams face fair conditions, and whether the sport is adapting fast enough to protect the places where football lives, from World Cup stadiums to local pitches.

Where Football Lives is a global coalition working to raise awareness of extreme weather’s impact on football and support practical adaptation across the game. With the tournament about to kick off, we have collated some projections — supported by data — about how this World Cup could be affected by heat in various ways. These include: 

Before kick off: conditions that could influence team selection, rotation and tactical approach.

In play: signs of heat-managed football (e.g. tempo, pressing, transitions, intensity and substitutions).

Hydration breaks: why they’re part of the World Cup and how they may impact the game.

Post-match: whether the conditions changed the game, and how heat might affect recovery. 

Extreme heat is expected to impact the 2026 Men’s World Cup.

• Roughly a quarter of World Cup matches across the United States, Mexico and Canada are likely to be played in conditions exceeding heat safety limits recommended by FIFPRO, almost twice the risk seen at the 1994 World Cup in the U.S. (Warm Weather Attribution)
• FIFA has already built heat protocols into the tournament format: every 2026 World Cup match will include three-minute hydration breaks midway through each half. This is the first time this has ever needed to be introduced to the World Cup tournament, and is a direct response to increasing extreme heat due to climate change. (FIFA & WHO)
• Locations with the highest heat risk and no air conditioned environment include Monterrey, Miami, Kansas City, Boston, New York and Philadelphia. (Mullan et al)
• The 2025 Club World Cup gave football a preview of 2026: players dizzy on the pitch, managers cutting training short, substitutes sheltering indoors, and one coach saying 10 players asked to come off because of heat and humidity. (Reuters) 
  
  • Enzo Fernandez (Argentina, Chelsea): "Playing in this temperature is very dangerous, it's very dangerous. Moreover, for the spectacle, for the people who come to enjoy the stadium, for the people who watch it at home…the game, the speed of the game is not the same, everything becomes very slow.”

Heat could impact tactics and lead to less intense play.

• The World Cup could be played under performance-limiting heat. Up to 88% of matches could be played in heat-stress conditions already linked with fewer sprints and reduced high-intensity running. (Mullan et al)
• USA manager Mauricio Pochettino and England manager Thomas Tuchel have both talked about the need to adapt their strategy to the heat, with Tuchel saying “It's an issue for high-level football - it will reduce the intensity of the matches…It will reduce the amount of intensive runs, offensively and defensively. The match and the plan will naturally adapt. You cannot play the same football in 45C than in 21C”. (BBC)
• Heat could also affect decision-making, not just running. A 2024 review found that heat exposure can impair cognitive function, including decision-making and pass choices. (Plakias et al)
• Uneven experiences of heat across stadiums and kick-off times could create a fairness issue - as it could reward teams that slow the game down and punish teams built around pressing, transitions and repeated sprints, as well as potentially impacting recovery times. 
• It also impacts the traditions that travelling fans have around the World Cup. For example, Scottish fans have been warned about the potential risk of doing their traditional marches to their game in Miami given the expected high heat and humidity. (Scottish Sun)

The threat posed by increasing extreme heat goes beyond the World Cup, impacting grassroots football in the US and globally. 

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• Research shows 14 of 16 of the World Cup stadiums had already exceeded safe-play thresholds in 2025 across at least three hazards — extreme heat, flooding, and unplayable rainfall. (Pitches in Peril)
• The same pressures reach down to the grassroots: Mo Salah's Egyptian home ground could face more than a month of unplayable heat annually; William Troost-Ekong's childhood pitch in Nigeria could see 338 days of extreme heat by 2050.
• The pitches that shaped today's elite players are already under threat — and so are the ones shaping tomorrow's. (Pitches in Peril)
  
  • Around 9,000 US high school athletes are treated for heat illness every year, and a Gen Z child now experiences four times as many extreme heat days as a Gen X child. (EPA; TIME Magazine)
  • Young players are also less efficient at regulating heat than adults, making them disproportionately exposed. (EPA)

Defending where football lives. 

Football doesn’t begin in stadiums. It lives in parks, cages, streets, pitches and open spaces where people play, connect and build community. But those places are increasingly threatened by extreme heat, flooding, poor air quality and other extreme weather.

When extreme weather threatens to cancel games, it doesn’t just affect the 90 minutes: it puts a strain on our communities. For some, football is a vital part of their social life. For many others—whether playing or watching in parks, pitches, and stadiums week in, week out—it is a lifeline. A way to finally switch off. The thing that keeps them going in uncertain times. 

Extreme heat, flooding and wildfires risk the routines, relationships, and moments of connection that people rely on. We need to come together to defend where football lives.

About the Where Football Lives campaign

Where Football Lives is a global campaign bringing together fans, players, clubs and grassroots organisations to defend the places where football lives and help keep the game playable. 

The campaign aims to raise awareness of the ways football is affected by extreme weather - from grassroots pitches to international tournaments - and supports practical steps to help grassroots football adapt to extreme heat, flooding and other climate-related threats.  A practical toolkit on adaptation has been developed with the US Soccer Forward Foundation and Football for Future.

On June 6, Where Football Lives brought the football community together and set a new Guinness World Record for the most amount of people juggling a ball in unison for 10 seconds. Thousands turned out in more than 50 venues, in countries including the United States, Mexico, Canada, Brazil and the UK, in this collective act of defence for the spaces that shape the game. Miami, the US hub for this event, is one of the most heat-exposed 2026 World Cup host cities.

The campaign is convened by the charity Count Us In, in partnership with Common Goal, Earth FC, Football for Future, Green Sports Alliance Foundation, and Planetary Guardians, with US collaboration from the US Soccer Forward Foundation's Keeping Score of What Matters initiative.

For more information on the campaign, please contact: comms@count-us-in.org