Climate Change Soccer

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A glacier melting into the Arctic sea might not seem to have any relation to the 2026 World Cup final, but consider this: Those rising seas and warming waters are the reason that next summer’s World Cup final might kick off at 9 a.m.

• Or be played in four quarters.

• Or be stopped every 15 minutes for water breaks.

• Or be held indoors.

These are just a few of the ideas being floated — some more seriously than others — for the tournament in the wake of scorching heat and torrential rains that have plagued this summer’s Club World Cup across the U.S., but minor tweaks won’t be enough. Climate change is here to stay in North America, Europe, Asia and the other continents and the wildfires, storms, heat waves, floods, droughts, food shortages and natural disasters that consistently pummel the earth will increasingly impact major outdoor sports events.

One year ago, the United Nations released a climate change report that warned there are just 10 years to dramatically change policies around the world to prevent the worst impacts of climate change. The world is now in “climate crunch time,” the U.N. warned, as greenhouse gases — which trap heat in the atmosphere that warms global temperatures and fuel more extreme weather events — have hit “unprecedented levels.”

“We’re teetering on a planetary tight rope,” U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres said. “Either (global) leaders bridge the emissions gap, or we plunge headlong into climate disaster.”

China and the United States are the world’s two biggest producers of greenhouse gases, although the U.S.’s per capita emissions is higher. 

The first three weeks of the Club World Club dealt with thunderstorms that delayed several group stage matches and blistering heat and humidity so severe that reserves were kept indoors so as to remain fresh. Philadelphia, New York and Washington, D.C. all topped 100 degrees and lightning strikes in Charlotte were so insistent that a severe weather warning was issued and the match between Chelsea and Benfica was suspended for more than two hours.

“This tournament is probably a really good wake-up call for everyone to look at the scheduling of matches in future tournaments,” said Alexander Bielefeld, the director of policy and strategic relations for Fifapro, the global soccer players union.

And it’s not just the Club World Cup that is suffering. The Gold Cup that was held in parallel has faced extreme weather and 100-degree temperatures in St. Louis, Phoenix, Las Vegas and Arlington, Texas, while droughts and high temperatures kicked off a wildfire season in California that experts believe could be the worst ever.

In Europe, heat waves and electrical storms put the Wimbledon tennis tournament on notice, as 90-degree days forced players to take cover indoors during shade breaks, and Tour de France organizers are debating whether to water down roads ahead of this month’s race so the course does not melt away under the cyclists’ tires.

In Japan, government officials are debating the cancellation of sports tournaments and club activities in schools as climate change pushes heat levels beyond safe limits. Climate experts have called for fundamental changes to how school sports are run, including shifting tournaments to cooler months and investing in indoor training spaces — steps that many regional schools may struggle to afford without government support.

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Although five of next summer’s World Cup venues are indoors — Houston, Vancouver, Atlanta, Dallas (Arlington) and Los Angeles (Inglewood) — the rest are open-air and most have experienced record temperatures in recent years. Seattle hit 108 degrees in 2021, Miami registered 98 degrees in 2023, Mexico City reached 94 degrees in 2024 and Boston topped out at 102 degrees just last month.

MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford is scheduled to host the 2026 World Cup final on July 19, but critics note the stadium’s lack of shade and the fact that July is the hottest month of the year in New Jersey, with average temperatures in the high 80s. FIFA now mandates that water breaks occur when a temperature and humidity metric reaches 89.6 degrees.

FIFA prides itself on having a climate strategy in place since 2021, but three of the strategy’s four pillars are focused on carbon emissions, sustainability and its own climate impact, with less focus on how — or if — to play soccer amid actual climate change. Little of the preparation or management of the matches in this summer’s World Club Cup or Gold Cup indicates that FIFA is remotely prepared for the task of playing soccer under increasingly extreme weather conditions.

And that task will only become more difficult in the United States as Donald Trump’s crusade against climate change — he often refers to it as a “hoax” — takes hold in the wake of his crude disembowelment of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the National Weather Service shortly after taking office in January. Trump eliminated over 1,000 NOAA jobs and reduced the administration’s workforce by 20 percent, and shuttered nearly 600 National Weather Service posts that play key roles in identifying and tracking severe weather systems.

“Our worst nightmare is that weather forecast offices will be so understaffed that there will be needless loss of life,” wrote five former National Weather Service directors from both Democratic and Republican administrations in an open letter on May 2. 

In early July, rains that more than doubled predicted amounts hit central Texas and caused severe flooding that killed at least 100, a tragedy that meteorologists believe could have been avoided with accurate science.

Which brings us back to the 2026 World Cup and that melting iceberg in the Arctic. The ocean is the single greatest regulator of global weather and it has absorbed 90% of the heat from human-caused carbon dioxide emissions since the industrial era. Yet climate change is shrinking glaciers faster than ever and more than a trillion tons have been lost since 2000. As the water level rises and ocean temperatures warm, entire regions of the earth begin to behave differently.

Take the Gulf of Mexico, which reached 90 degrees in 2024 and is experiencing sea level rises two to three times faster than the global average. The Gulf experienced its worst hurricane season on record in 2020, when an extraordinary 30 storms pounded the Gulf and Atlantic coasts of the U.S. and every single mile of the mainland U.S. Atlantic coast, from Texas to Maine, was under a watch or warning related to tropical cyclones at some point.

Climate experts predict record hurricane activity this year and more of same in 2026. And the 2026 World Cup? Eight venues — literally half of the stadiums in the U.S., Canada and Mexico scheduled to take part — lie within the impact range of those storms.

Doug Cress is the host of the “PDX-Earth” environmental radio show on Portland State University’s KPSU, and he has worked for the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), the World Association of Zoos and Aquariums (WAZA) and Ocean Conservancy. Cress has also covered four World Cups, four Olympic Games and wrote for Soccer America from 1985 to 2000.

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