World Cup 2026. Photo: Shutterstock Ahead of the opening of the 2026 World Cup on June 11, 2026, an examination by Good Vision, a company from the Fahn Kanne Group, which specializes in sustainability and corporate responsibility, indicates that the tournament, which will be held this year in the United States, Canada, and Mexico, is expected to be the most polluting World Cup in the history of world football, with a carbon footprint estimated at approximately 3.7 million tons of CO2e.
For comparison, the previous World Cup, held in Qatar in 2022, was estimated at 3.63 million tons of CO2e, the 2018 World Cup in Russia at 2.16 million tons, and the 2014 World Cup in Brazil at 2.72 million tons. According to the data, the 2026 World Cup alone is expected to account for almost a third of the global football industry's annual emissions, estimated at 30 million tons of carbon per year.
Good Vision explains that the dramatic jump in emissions is mainly due to the unprecedented expansion of the tournament: the number of teams increased from 32 to 48, and the number of matches jumped from 64 to 104. In addition, for the first time in history, the World Cup will be held across three countries, which requires long and frequent flights between cities thousands of kilometers apart.
According to the data, the carbon footprint of a single fan coming from abroad is expected to jump from a range of about 5 tons of CO2e in the 2022 Qatar World Cup to a range of between 7 and 9 tons of CO2e in the upcoming World Cup, mainly due to the increase in domestic flights between cities and countries during the tournament.
Alongside the worrying figures, the tournament organization and the host stadiums are also trying to showcase sustainability measures. The SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles, for example, uses passive cooling solutions based on natural air flow and a special ETFE roof, which reduces the direct heat load of solar radiation by about 86% and reduces the need for artificial lighting during daytime games.
Additionally, some of the host stadiums, including Lumen Field in Seattle and Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta, have some of the highest recycling and waste separation rates in the sports world, with a goal of diverting 90%-95% of waste to compost and recycle instead of landfill.
However, the company notes that these measures are difficult to balance the huge increase in emissions caused by the scale of the tournament and the dependence on flights. In addition, some stadiums in the US and Canada use synthetic turf on a daily basis, and the temporary switch to natural turf for the World Cup requires massive irrigation of tens of thousands of liters per day - even in areas suffering from water shortages, such as California.
Ivri Verbin, CEO of Good Vision: "The 2026 World Cup illustrates the great contradiction that currently accompanies the global sports industry. On the one hand, we see more investment in green technologies, recycling and solutions to reduce waste. On the other hand, the very expansion of the tournaments, more games, more host countries and more flight, is pushing the carbon footprint to new heights. The question is no longer just how to make a sporting event greener, but whether the relentless growth model of giant events can even reconcile with the climatic reality of the coming years."