FIFA World Cup 2026 · Location & Weather

One Tournament,
Sixteen Climates

The first World Cup spread across a continent hands teams not just opponents, but weather — from a 38°C furnace to a 21°C evening.

One Tournament, Sixteen Climates

The 2026 World Cup will not be played under one sky. Rank its 16 stadiums by how hot the air actually feels in the tournament window and the spread is staggering: 38.6°C in Houston, 38.3°C in Dallas, down to a mild 21.5°C in Vancouver. That is a 17.1°C gulf between the hottest and coolest venue — inside the same tournament, sometimes on the same day.

At one extreme a team sweats through a Houston afternoon that feels like 38.6°C; at the other it plays a Vancouver evening cooler than a London spring. Miami is wet on 88% of days; Santa Clara saw rain on 0% of the days we sampled. Mexico City kicks the whole thing off at 2,200 metres of altitude. The “where” of this World Cup is also the “how hard.”

This is a story about location and weather — about a draw that hands teams not just opponents, but climates. Explore the map below to see it.

The centerpiece · click any venue

The 2026 World Cup Weather Map

  feels-like high: 21°C → 38°C ◯ marker size = number of matches Climate: Open-Meteo (CC BY 4.0), 2021–2024 average for 11 Jun–19 Jul · Photos: Wikimedia Commons

How hot it really feels — all 16 venues

Average apparent (“feels-like”) high, 11 Jun–19 Jul, 2021–2024. Spread top to bottom: 17.1°C.

Sonification: higher pitch = hotter venue. Each tone highlights its bar.
Optional atmosphere — the page works fully in silence.

The First Continental World Cup

For the first time, a World Cup spans three countries and 16 cities: 11 in the United States, 3 in Mexico, 2 in Canada. It is also the first 48-team, 104-match edition, stretched over 39 days from 11 June to 19 July. To tame the travel, FIFA split the hosts into Western, Central and Eastern regional clusters — but the clusters still cover four time zones and thousands of kilometres.

The load is lopsided. The United States hosts 78 of the 104 matches across its 11 venues; Canada and Mexico get 13 each. Three-quarters of the tournament unfolds in the country with the widest internal climate range of all.

Even within that, some cities carry far more football than others. Dallas leads with 9 matches, followed by Los Angeles, New York/New Jersey and Atlanta at 8 apiece. Mexico's three venues sit at the bottom of the table, 4 to 5 matches each.

Matches per venue, colored by host nation

United States 78 · Mexico 13 · Canada 13

AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas, host of the most 2026 World Cup matches
AT&T Stadium, Arlington — 9 matches, the busiest venue and a dry-hot, climate-controlled bowl. Photo: bobbyh_80, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0.

The Heat Is the Headline

Heat is the headline. FIFPRO, the global players' union, has flagged six venues — Atlanta, Dallas, Houston, Kansas City, Miami and Monterrey — as posing an “extremely high risk” of heat-stress injury. The climate record agrees: those are clustered at the top of the feels-like ranking, between 33.9°C and 38.6°C.

And that is where a lot of football is scheduled. Weight each venue's matches by its feels-like high and Dallas tops the heat-exposure index (9 matches at 38.3°C), trailed by Atlanta, Houston and Miami. In raw counts, 35 of 104 matches (33.7%) fall at venues whose typical feels-like high is 34°C or more, and 41 matches (39.4%) land at the six venues FIFPRO singled out. Roughly four in ten World Cup matches are booked into the danger band.

38.6°Cfeels-like high in Houston — the hottest venue
39.4%of matches at FIFPRO “extremely high risk” venues
17.1°Cgap between the hottest and coolest venue

Where the most football meets the most heat

Heat-exposure index = matches × feels-like high. Bars colored by feels-like temperature.

Why does Houston (33.5°C air) feel hotter than Dallas (34.9°C air)? Humidity. The feels-like penalty is biggest where the air is wettest — Miami adds +5.9°C, Houston +5.1°C — while dry Santa Clara actually feels half a degree cooler than its thermometer reads. Across the venues, humidity and the feels-like penalty move together (r = 0.49). It is not just heat; it is heat the body cannot sweat away.

This is not hypothetical. At the 2025 Club World Cup, the same-summer dress rehearsal, temperatures hit 104°F in Charlotte and players described the conditions as brutal. FIFPRO wants matches postponed at a 28°C WBGT; FIFA does not act until 32°C — a gap a panel of experts called “impossible to justify.” FIFA's answer so far is mandatory three-minute hydration breaks each half.

Brutal, Dry-Hot, Warm, Mild

Plot every venue by feels-like heat against humidity and the 16 sort into four tribes. Three are brutal — hot and humid at once: Houston, Miami and Atlanta. Two are dry-hot — fierce thermometers but drier air, where roofs and evaporation help: Dallas and Monterrey. Six are merely warm, and five are genuinely mild — Mexico City, Toronto, Vancouver, Seattle and Santa Clara, all at or below a 27°C feels-like.

Four climate tribes — tap a tribe to isolate it

x = humidity, y = feels-like high, bubble size = matches.

Brutal (hot+humid) Dry-hot Warm Mild

Fairness demands a caveat. The hottest venues are not all equally exposed. Dallas (AT&T), Houston (NRG) and Atlanta (Mercedes-Benz) have full climate control, and FIFA says roofed stadiums will host daytime matches. But BC Place's roof will be open for every 2026 game because FIFA wants natural light on the grass, and the final venue, MetLife, has no roof at all. The climate numbers are the hazard; the roof is the mitigation — and the two do not always line up.

The other lever is the clock. FIFPRO points to Major League Soccer, where Miami simply does not kick off at midday and hasn't for years. Broadcast windows pull the other way, toward early-afternoon European prime time. That collision — TV money against the thermometer — is where the schedule meets the weather.

A diptych contrasting a sweltering sun-baked stadium with a cool misty one
The gulf, made visible: a brutal sun-baked bowl beside a cool, misty one. Illustrative AI image (OpenRouter, gpt-5.4-image-2) — not a real venue.

Rain, Altitude and the Cool Corners

Heat is not the only weather that bites. Miami is wet on 88% of days in the window, with Mexico's altitude cities close behind (Guadalajara 73%, Mexico City 72%) thanks to the North American summer monsoon. At the other pole, California is parched: Santa Clara recorded rain on 0% of sampled days, Inglewood just 1%. Even famously drizzly Seattle is dry in midsummer at 13%. Wet venues trade heat stress for lightning delays.

How often it rains in the tournament window

Share of days with rain, 2021–2024 average. Miami 88% → Santa Clara 0%.

Then there is the thin air. Mexico City's Estadio Azteca sits at 2,200 metres — more than a kilometre above any other venue and high enough to sap aerobic capacity and bend the flight of the ball. It is also why Mexico City stays mild despite its low latitude: altitude, not breeze, is its air conditioner. The tournament opens there on 11 June and ends at sea-level MetLife on 19 July, the geographic bookends of a continental sprawl.

Venue elevation — Mexico City towers over the field

Metres above sea level. Every other venue sits below 330 m.

The 16 venues

Stadium photos via Wikimedia Commons under their respective CC licenses (see References). Kansas City / Arrowhead Stadium has no public-domain photo and is shown as a climate placeholder, never a fabricated image.

The Schedule Meets the Sky

The 39-day calendar opens softly with two matches on 11 June, swells to six on the busiest group-stage day, then narrows to a single match in the late knockout rounds. On those dense early days, the most stadiums run at once — multiplying the number of pitches baking under a peak afternoon sun on the same date.

Matches per day across the 39-day window

Opener 11 Jun (2) → group-stage peak 24 Jun (6) → final 19 Jul (1).

So the location-and-weather story is really one question with two halves: where the matches are, and how hard the sky pushes back. Four in ten of them sit in the heat band that worried the doctors. The fixes exist — roofs, evening kickoffs, postponement thresholds — but every one of them is a choice still being argued over.

One honest caveat runs under all of it: these are typical-climate numbers, averaged over 2021–2024, not a 2026 forecast. They are the loaded dice, not the roll. But when a third of the matches sit on the hot face of the die, you do not need a forecast to see the gamble.

Climate, not a forecast Every weather figure here is typical historical climate for the 11 June–19 July window, averaged over 2021–2024 from the Open-Meteo archive (CC BY 4.0) — not a prediction for any specific 2026 match date. “Feels-like” (apparent temperature) approximates a heat index from air temperature and humidity; it is not the WBGT metric FIFA and FIFPRO use for thresholds. Raw climate also ignores stadium roofs and air conditioning: Dallas, Houston and Atlanta have full climate control, BC Place's roof will be open in 2026, and MetLife has none. Some fixtures list playoff placeholder opponents; this story depends only on venue and date.
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