Should FIFA consider rescheduling the World Cup amid extreme heat?
All eyes will fall on the US tonight, as Spain and Argentina battle it out to win the FIFA World Cup 2026 tournament.
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Tonight’s final will be hosted at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey, where temperatures are forecast to reach 28°C. This is two degrees above the threshold at which FIFPRO, a global representative organisation for professional footballers, recommends implementing enhanced cooling measures.
And yet the tournament’s highly-anticipated finale will end on a much cooler note compared to earlier matches.
Analysis from Reuters found that more than one in four games have experienced dangerous heat conditions - with 27 matches exceeding the Web Bulb Globe Temperature of 28°C. This accounts for factors such as humidity, as well as air temperature, and is the threshold where FIFPRO recommends delaying or rescheduling the game.
This year’s game has clashed with back-to-back heatwaves that have sent global temperatures soaring 1.39°C above pre-industrial averages. The US is no exception to the hot spell, having sweltered under 40°C temperatures in the previous weeks.
It’s cast light on how the stadiums being used in this year’s tournaments are struggling to cope with today’s warming climate.
“A stadium may still function, but that doesn’t mean it’s performing well,” Mark Sait, CEO of environmental consultancy firm SaveMoneyCutCarbon tells Euronews Earth.
“If players need more protection from heat and fans are uncomfortable before they even reach their seats, the margin is already being squeezed.”
Why air conditioning won’t save the World Cup
Air conditioning has become a flashpoint discussion across Europe following headlines that extreme heat caused 10,000 excess deaths last month.
Scientists from the World Weather Attribution (WWA) say that such high temperatures would have been “virtually impossible” if it weren’t for climate change.
However, environmentalists have warned against air conditioning becoming commonplace across the continent due to its link to global warming.
Air conditioning contributes to the urban heat island effect. This is where hot air is trapped in city infrastructure such as concrete and asphalt, before being released back into the atmosphere – increasing the demand for indoor cooling.
Refrigerants used in air conditioning units also dump greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, which drive global warming at a much faster rate than carbon dioxide.
“Air conditioning will sometimes be needed, but it cannot become the default answer to every heat problem, because that simply pushes more demand onto the energy system and makes venues more expensive to run,” Sait adds.
“The smarter approach is to make the building waste less energy before asking it to cool more space.”
Sait advises stadium owners to focus on “retrofitting” their buildings to optimise existing heating and ventilation systems.
“From there, improvements such as more efficient lighting or water-saving technologies can reduce overall demand, while regular monitoring ensures those changes are delivering measurable results,” he adds.
How football stadiums can cope better under global warming
Retrofitting stadiums is much cheaper and more environmentally friendly than bulldozing buildings to then build new versions. Instead, owners could invest in building-fabric measures such as ‘cool roofs’. This is where white or reflective paint is coated on the roofs of homes to make them absorb less heat.
A 2024 study by UCL and the University of Exeter found that this kind of roofing could have cooled the city of London by about 0.8°C if they had been widely installed throughout the city during its scorching 2018 summer.
Solar control glazing is another option that works in a very similar way, by reflecting infrared heat while allowing high levels of natural light to pass through. This would help lower stadium temperatures while preventing glare or darkening of the pitch.
“The key point is that retrofit should make the stadium perform better before more air conditioning is added,” Sait explains. “Done properly, it reduces unnecessary consumption, lowers running costs and creates cooler, safer spaces for fans, staff and players.”
Should FIFA move the World Cup due to extreme heat?
Extreme heat has triggered calls to move the World Cup to cooler locations, or change match times to the evening – when temperatures tend to be lower.
“FIFA and host nations should absolutely be looking at scheduling and stadium selection through a climate-focused lens now, because the time of a match is no longer just a broadcast decision, it has become part of the safety plan,” Sait says.
The expert adds that if a stadium cannot safely operate at a certain time of day, that should shake the fixture list. However, he argues that scheduling is only part of the answer – reiterating the need for retrofitting stadiums to give organisers more control.
