What is the Environmental Impact of the World Cup?

By Abdul Ahad NazakatReviewed by Laura ThomsonJul 8 2026

The FIFA Men's World Cup has grown from a 32-team tournament into a 48-team, multi-continent spectacle, and its carbon footprint is growing with it. 

Image Credit: Gorodenkoff/Shutterstock.com

A July 2025 briefing titled FIFA's Climate Blind Spot, authored by the New Weather Institute, Scientists for Global Responsibility (SGR), the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) and Cool Down, sets out to quantify that footprint across the 2026, 2030 and 2034 tournaments, and to assess the climate risks facing players and fans at this year's finals in North America.¹ So, why is the 2026 edition positioned to be the most environmentally damaging World Cup yet?

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The Report's Findings

The report's headline estimate is that the 2026 World Cup will generate approximately 9.0 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (tCO₂e), against a baseline average of 4.7 million tCO₂e across the four tournaments held between 2010 and 2022 - a 92% increase.¹

The 2030 finals, co-hosted across Spain, Portugal and Morocco with three matches in South America, are projected at 6.1 million tCO₂e (a 29% rise), while the 2034 tournament in Saudi Arabia is estimated at 8.6 million tCO₂e (an 82% rise).¹

Under a more conservative baseline methodology used by FIFA itself, the governing body's own estimate for the comparatively compact 2022 Qatar tournament was 3.6 million tCO₂e, rising to roughly 5.25 million tCO₂e once permanent stadium construction is included.¹

Air travel is identified as the dominant emissions source for 2026, accounting for 7.72 million tCO₂e, over four times the historical average, a consequence of the tournament's expansion from 64 to 104 matches and its spread across 16 cities in three countries with no high-speed rail alternative.¹

The report also flags that standard aviation emissions factors likely understate the sector's warming effect. Incorporating the non-CO₂ heating effects of aircraft at altitude, based on peer-reviewed atmospheric science, pushes the upper-bound estimate for 2026 as high as 15.0 million tCO₂e - 40–70% above the basic estimate.² This non-CO₂ effect, whereby aviation emissions are estimated to warm the climate at roughly three times the rate attributable to CO₂ alone, is drawn from research published in Atmospheric Environment.²

Beyond direct tournament emissions, the report introduces a methodology for estimating emissions “induced” by FIFA's sponsorship deals with fossil fuel companies. It reasons that sponsorship functions as advertising that drives additional fuel sales. On this basis, it estimates the FIFA–Aramco partnership for 2026 could induce approximately 30 million tCO₂e, a figure larger than the tournament's direct emissions, owing to Aramco's position as the world's largest oil and gas producer by historical output.¹^,³ A parallel estimate for the Qatar Airways sponsorship puts induced emissions at 3.3–5.8 million tCO₂e. ¹

The report also highlights opportunities to strengthen climate governance and implementation. FIFA’s 2021 climate strategy set out an 18-point action plan aimed at achieving a 50% reduction in emissions by 2030 and net zero by 2040. According to the authors’ assessment, 2 of the 18 actions have been completed, while 14 have not yet shown publicly visible progress. The report notes this level of implementation in the context of FIFA’s reported $11 billion budget for the 2023–2026 cycle.¹

Past World Cup Environmental Consequences

Placed against this trajectory, the 2010–2022 tournaments averaged 4.7 million tCO₂e, with air transport (1.82 million tCO₂e) and new stadium construction (1.89 million tCO₂e) the two largest contributors.¹

Qatar 2022 illustrated the construction-heavy end of this range, with seven of eight stadiums newly built or substantially reconstructed. FIFA's own accounting, which allocated only a fraction of total construction emissions to the tournament rather than the full amount, a methodology the report argues understates the true figure, nonetheless produced one of the highest per-tournament footprints on record once corrected.¹^,5 The comparison matters because it establishes the counterfactual against which the report measures the scale of the 2026–2034 increases; without it, the 92% and 82% rises calculated for 2026 and 2034 would lack a reference point.

Why the 2026 World Cup is Set to Be the Most Polluting Yet

Three structural factors, according to the report, combine to make 2026 the most polluting World Cup on record.

Growing Number of Teams and Matches

First is the tournament's expansion from 32 to 48 teams, which raised the number of matches from 64 to 104 and, combined with a three-country, four-time-zone footprint spanning the United States, Canada and Mexico, locks in heavy reliance on short-haul flights between host cities in the absence of high-speed rail.¹

Sponsorship

Second is the FIFA–Aramco sponsorship, whose induced emissions are estimated at roughly 30 million tCO₂e, several times the tournament's direct footprint.¹^,³

Climate Risk

Third, and distinct from the greenhouse gas accounting, is the physical climate risk borne by the tournament itself. A climate emergency risk assessment conducted with the EDF found that 8 of the 16 host stadiums require environmental intervention, with the AT&T Stadium (Dallas), NRG Stadium (Houston), SoFi Stadium (Los Angeles), and Hard Rock Stadium (Miami) requiring critical intervention due to combinations of extreme heat, flooding, wildfire, and hurricane exposure.¹

Six stadiums are projected to exceed a Wet Bulb Globe Temperature of 26.67 °C, above the threshold at which the American College of Sports Medicine recommends suspending continuous athletic activity.¹

Independent analyses published since the report reinforce this picture. Climate Central's attribution study of the 2026 fixture list found that 97 of the 104 scheduled matches are likely to exceed 28 °C, a threshold associated in sports-science literature with reduced sprint frequency and running intensity, and that climate change has measurably increased the odds of performance-impairing heat at nearly every venue.⁶

A companion analysis by World Weather Attribution estimated that host-city Wet Bulb Globe Temperatures are already running 0.5–0.8 °C higher than they would be in a world without human-caused warming, with inland venues such as Dallas, Houston, Kansas City and Philadelphia most exposed.⁷

The New Weather Institute report frames 2026 not as an anomaly but as the leading edge of a trend: tournament expansion, fossil fuel sponsorship and continued hosting decisions in climate-vulnerable regions are, in the authors' assessment, on course to make each successive men's World Cup more carbon-intensive than the last, even as the physical conditions in which it is played become progressively more hazardous to those on and off the pitch.¹

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References and Further Reading

1. Parkinson, S., Ali, S., & Daley, F. (2025). FIFA's Climate Blind Spot: The Men's World Cup in a Warming World. New Weather Institute, in association with Scientists for Global Responsibility, the Environmental Defense Fund and Cool Down. https://www.newweather.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/FIFAs_climate_blind_spot.pdf
2. Lee, D. S., et al. (2021). The contribution of global aviation to anthropogenic climate forcing for 2000 to 2018. Atmospheric Environment, 244, 117834. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.atmosenv.2020.117834
3. InfluenceMap (2024). The Carbon Majors Database: Launch Report. https://carbonmajors.org/briefing/The-Carbon-Majors-Database-26913
4. Diab, K. (2023, June 8). Foul play: Advertising regulator gives FIFA red card for billing World Cup as carbon neutral. Carbon Market Watch. https://carbonmarketwatch.org/2023/06/07/foul-play-advertising-regulator-gives-fifa-red-card-for-billing-world-cup-as-carbon-neutral/
5. International Olympic Committee (2025). Q&A: Understanding the Carbon Footprint Methodology for the Olympic Games. https://www.olympics.com/ioc/news/q-a-understanding-the-carbon-footprint-methodology-for-the-olympic-games
6. Climate Central (2026). 2026 World Cup: Climate Change Boosts Performance-Impairing Heat at Nearly Every Match. https://www.climatecentral.org/climate-matters/world-cup-matches
7. World Weather Attribution / Climate Central, as reported in: Climate change increases risk of extreme heat at nearly all 2026 World Cup matches, studies find (2026). Mail & Guardian. https://mg.co.za/the-green-guardian/2026-06-11-climate-change-increases-risk-of-extreme-heat-at-nearly-all-2026-world-cup-matches-studies-find/

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