Does Anyone Actually Care About the 2026 FIFA World Cup?

Between fatigue, prices and politics, the game’s global showcase feels irrelevant

Does anyone care about the 2026 FIFA World Cup?

Of course, there are plenty of people around the world who care about the upcoming tournament, which kicks off on 11 June. As I write this, we are just 25 days away from the biggest event in football. Social media tells me that soccer fans in the United States are dusting off their replica shirts, planning barbecues, and preparing to explain the offside rule to relatives who still think football, or soccer, is for effeminate men.

Here in the United Kingdom, however, the mood feels rather different.

From my observations, conversations, and the general feedback I have had from football supporters, very few people seem particularly bothered about this summer’s tournament. That is not because English fans have suddenly developed a healthy relationship with reality. There will always be a section of the population convinced that “football’s coming home”, regardless of the evidence presented over the last 60 years.

The lack of excitement appears to be rooted elsewhere. Part of it is the state of the world. Part of it is the political climate in the United States. Part of it is Donald Trump. And part of it, as always, is FIFA and its seemingly limitless ability to wrap football in layers of capitalism.

There is also the small matter of the actual football currently being played. The Premier League title race is reaching its conclusion, with Manchester City still capable of catching Arsenal. The UEFA Champions League Final, Europa League Final, and Conference League Final are all still to come. English clubs Arsenal, Aston Villa, and Crystal Palace are all involved in the finals. For many supporters, there is more than enough football to worry about before anyone starts pretending to care about group-stage matches in Houston and Kansas City.

And that is really the heart of the issue: football fatigue.

We are only one summer removed from the 2025 FIFA Club World Cup, a competition no one asked for and nobody particularly needed. It crowned Chelsea as “the best team in the world”, which is a delightful concept when you consider they followed that triumph by changing managers twice, losing the FA Cup Final, and finishing in mid-table in the Premier League. The best team in the world!

Midway through this season, I cancelled my Sky Sports subscription. At £28 per month, I simply was not watching enough football to justify the cost. I kept TNT Sports so I could still watch the Champions League, but I have almost completely checked out of the Premier League.

Part of the reason is that the club I support is not going to win the title. Part of it is practical: I do not have the time to sit in front of the television every Saturday and Sunday. And part of it is that, this spring, I discovered that life contains other interests.

Instead of watching matches on television, I now listen to many of them on the radio for free. It turns out football commentary is still quite enjoyable when it is not accompanied by betting adverts and a panel of former players stating the blindingly obvious. But that is an article for another day.

The World Cup is just weeks away, and I could not care less. More surprisingly, neither can many of the people around me.

My son turns 13 this month. His closest friends are all the same age. They play for teams across Greater Manchester. They are football-mad. Most of them play for two different sides. When they are not training or playing matches, they are kicking a ball around in the park or at a playground.

In other words, they are exactly the sort of children who should be counting down the days until the World Cup and buying football sticker books. And yet my son has not mentioned it once.

There is no wall chart. No discussion about who will win. No desperate plea for a new England shirt. The same applies to his friends. Of course, this is a small sample size, and there are undoubtedly millions of children around the world who are excited for the tournament. But in my little corner of football-obsessed Greater Manchester, the World Cup doesn’t matter.

That absence of excitement is striking. Perhaps my scepticism is influenced by my own memories of the 1994 FIFA World Cup. A tournament that I didn’t know existed until I turned on my television that faithful day. It helped that we had just four channels at the time, and I happened to change the channel to our local ABC affiliate, KSPR 33.

That tournament changed my life.

Before 1994, I had never watched a professional football match. I had already played in a local community league, although I hated it at the time. Then the World Cup arrived in the United States, and suddenly soccer was something more than what kids played in a local league.

It transformed how I saw the sport. More than that, it set me on a path that would eventually allow me to make a living in various ways from football.

Will the 2026 World Cup have the same effect on today’s children? Possibly.

But modern kids live in a world where elite football is available every day of the week. They can watch the Premier League, La Liga, Bundesliga, Serie A, and the Champions League from the palm of their hand. The World Cup is no longer a rare and magical interruption to the football calendar. It is just another content drop.

And an expensive one at that. Ticket prices for the 2026 World Cup, particularly in the United States, have started to fall. Before anyone gets too excited, they are still comfortably in three figures. A limited number of England match tickets have reportedly dipped to around £500. Some reports describe prices as being “in freefall” due to fans unwillingness to pay the previously high prices.

Personally, paying more than £100 for any sports game feels excessive. I am not one of those supporters who protests about ticket prices. I simply refuse to spend that kind of money when I can watch or listen to the match from my sofa. The refrigerator is near and the toilets are clean–at least most of the time.

According to Ticket Compare, the average price for a Premier League ticket outside London is less than £70, while London fixtures average around £100. Based on what FIFA and resale platforms are charging for the World Cup, it may be just as affordable, if not cheaper, to fly to England and watch a Premier League match instead.

Europe offers even better value. According to The Stadium Guide, the cheapest tickets are around €14 in Ligue 1, €19 in Serie A, and €30 in La Liga. During the 2024–25 Bundesliga season, average ticket prices were below €30, and many tickets included unlimited public transport on matchday.

That means your ticket gets you football and a train ride. In North America, it may barely cover the booking fee.

My own experience attending a Fortuna Düsseldorf match was refreshingly straightforward. For €17, I received entry to the match and unlimited bus and metro travel for the day. The only thing not included was a litre of beer.

Based on social media posts and news reports, North American fans appear to be the most enthusiastic about this World Cup. Perhaps that is unsurprising. It is their tournament, and many supporters have waited decades for an event of this scale to return to the continent.

The tournament will still attract enormous audiences. Billions will watch, and FIFA will undoubtedly release viewing figures that seem unfathomable by the average person. Yes, soccer is the world’s most popular sport, so telling everyone that 5 billion people watched the final seems realistic. This does mean that just 3.3 billion didn’t watch the final.

Yet it is difficult to ignore how much sentiment has shifted. Less than four years ago, football supporters and casual observers alike were furious that Qatar hosted the 2022 World Cup. Concerns about labour rights, corruption, and governance dominated the conversation. Now the tournament heads to the United States, and many of those concerns have simply been replaced by a different set of political anxieties. Out of sight, out of mind.

At the end of the day, I do not believe the 2026 World Cup will be the unqualified success that FIFA and many in North America expect it to be.

Perhaps I am biased. Perhaps I am simply exhausted by football’s relentless expansion. Perhaps I am the only person who feels this way.

But if FIFA’s ultimate achievement is making lifelong football obsessives feel indifferent to the World Cup, then that may be the organisation’s most impressive accomplishment yet.

Congratulations, FIFA. You have somehow managed to make me not want to watch the World Cup.