As the world prepares for the 2026 men’s FIFA World Cup — the first iteration of the tournament expanded to 48 competing nations, and the first co-hosted by three North American countries, the United States, Canada and Mexico — new research from environmental experts at the University of Lausanne (Unil) paints a stark dual picture: this edition will deliver unprecedented commercial revenue to FIFA, but it will also leave the largest carbon footprint of any international sporting event in history.
Unlike the Olympic Games, which have recorded consistent reductions in tournament emissions across recent editions, the men’s World Cup is moving in the opposite direction, according to Unil geographer David Gogishvili, who shared the findings of the research with Agence France-Presse.
Expansion from 32 to 48 teams combined with the unprecedented geographic spread of tournament venues across three countries creates unavoidable massive emissions, the research confirms. Unil’s calculations place total projected carbon dioxide emissions from the 2026 tournament between 5 million and 9 million tonnes. For context, that figure dwarfs the 1.75 million tonnes projected for the 2024 Paris Olympic Games, the 2.17 million tonnes estimated for the 2018 Russia World Cup (a 32-team event with 40 fewer matches), and the 3.17 million tonnes recorded for the 2022 Qatar World Cup, which was already criticized for its energy-intensive, hastily built, air-conditioned stadiums.
While the bid organizers for United 2026 have emphasized that all 16 tournament venues already existed when hosting rights were awarded in 2018 — a point the bid framed as a sustainability advantage — experts say that pre-built infrastructure cannot offset the core problem: the enormous geographic distance between host cities. The straight-line distance between the southernmost host city, Miami, and the northernmost, Vancouver, measures more than 4,500 kilometers, forcing teams, officials, media, and an expected 5 million-plus fans to rely heavily on air travel, the single largest contributor to carbon emissions for major international sporting events. For example, Bosnia and Herzegovina, if it qualifies for the group stage, would need to travel a cumulative 5,040 kilometers across three group stage matches hosted in Toronto, Los Angeles, and Seattle.
FIFA leadership, including President Gianni Infantino, has publicly framed the organization as committed to climate action: Infantino proclaimed his personal “determination” to fight climate change at the 2021 COP26 summit in Glasgow, and the body has long stated a policy to “measure, reduce and offset” World Cup-related emissions. However, FIFA’s environmental claims have faced significant regulatory and academic pushback. In 2023, the Swiss Fairness Commission reprimanded FIFA for misleading consumers by marketing the 2022 Qatar World Cup as “climate neutral,” and the organization has declined to issue any similar emissions guarantees for the 2026 tournament.
Environmental analysts argue that the most effective step to cut the climate impact of mega-sporting events is to limit their scale — a change the International Olympic Committee has already implemented by capping the number of athletes at 10,500 for Summer Games. But FIFA has moved in the opposite direction: expanding the men’s World Cup from 32 to 48 teams just one year after expanding the Club World Cup from 7 to 32 teams.
A 2025 report from the UK-based New Weather Institute think tank and Scientists for Global Responsibility underscores the outsized carbon cost of this expansion. The report notes that a single men’s World Cup group stage match generates between 44,000 and 72,000 tonnes of CO2 — an amount equivalent to the total annual emissions of 31,500 to 51,500 passenger vehicles in the United Kingdom. International tournament matches, the authors add, produce 26 to 42 times more emissions than top-tier national club matches.
Gogishvili argues that this growing carbon footprint stems from FIFA’s “insatiable appetite for growth,” which creates a self-reinforcing cycle: larger tournaments require more matches, which draw more athletes and fans, demand more hotel infrastructure, and require more long-distance travel, driving emissions ever higher. Critics warn this pattern is set to continue for future tournaments: the 2030 World Cup will be spread across six host nations on three continents, opening with three opening matches in South America before moving to Morocco, Spain, and Portugal for the rest of the tournament, while the 2034 edition will be hosted by Saudi Arabia — a country with a similar hot climate to Qatar, but a much larger landmass and 40 more matches than the 2022 tournament. In 2024, Aramco, Saudi Arabia’s state-owned oil giant and the world’s largest oil producer, became a top-tier FIFA sponsor.
Writing in the Journal of Management Research in 2024, Aix-Marseille University professor Gilles Pache concluded that “it would seem that FIFA’s environmental denial will continue” as the organization prioritizes commercial expansion over climate action.