With the 2026 World Cup, FIFA, football’s governing body, is scoring poorly for the climate and has even netted a few own goals.
Where were you when Kenny McLean scored THAT goal?
If you ask any Scottish football fan what they were doing at 9.48pm on Tuesday 18 November 2025 the answer will be the same: glued to a screen in a pub or at home, with clenched white knuckles and about to experience complete disbelief as McLean scores from the halfway line to secure a first World Cup qualification for our men’s team in almost 30 years.
The Tartan Army is on their way to the biggest sporting festival on the planet, and my goodness, are we looking forward to it. But at the back of your mind you can’t shake the feeling that this World Cup played across the United States of America, Mexico and Canada is less of a party and more of a debacle.
After all, FIFA head honcho Gianni Infantino thought it wise to create a vanity peace prize and to award it to a war hungry president who had been noisily demanding a Nobel peace prize. It is also unclear whether some teams and/or their fans will be able to enter the United States and how many risk being harassed, intimidated, arrested or deported. In the run up to the tournament, the United States denied entry to a referee from Somalia. FIFA’s failure to challenge this decision undermined its declared commitment to fair play and diversity. Highlighting this issue and the denial of entry for fans and journalists from certain countries, former England striker Ian Wright questioned, “Is this the spirit of football?”
And when it comes to climate, social and environmental goals, football’s governing body has moved the goalposts so far out of sight that not even Kenny McLean could hit the target.
Absolute chancers
Nelson Mandela once said, “Sport has the power to change the world. It has the power to unite in a way that little else does.” The emotional power of the “beautiful game” is so immense that it can bond people from around the world and bring them together.
And FIFA absolutely knows it. However, instead of using football’s popularity as a vehicle for positive environmental change by setting a good example, it is hiding behind the drama, action and spectacle on the pitch. Many fans will be talking more about wondergoals or disputing refereeing decisions and less about the organisation’s reckless climate impact, or feckless massaging of despotic egos.
In 2021, at COP26 in Glasgow, Infantino presented FIFA’s plans to halve its carbon emissions by the close of the decade, and to become net-zero by 2040. Yet, decision after decision since kicking off that pledge show that FIFA’s words are not backed up by action.
We investigated claims that the 2022 World Cup in Qatar would be “carbon neutral” and caught FIFA offside for greenwashing. This resulted in a red card from Swiss advertising regulators thanks to a legal challenge lodged by allies of Carbon Market Watch. Four years on, the 2026 World Cup, played across three giant countries, does not make such egregious and greenwashed boasts, but it is certainly not advancing FIFA towards its declared climate goals and may even be drifting further away from them.
Researchers from Scientists for Global Responsibility, the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) and Cool Down – the Sport for Climate Action Network have calculated that the North American edition – which has been expanded to include more teams than ever before, and will rely on teams and fans alike embarking upon intensive air travel – crunched the numbers for the 2026 tournament. They concluded that it will in all likelihood be the ‘most polluting World Cup of all time’, generating over 9 nine million tonnes of emissions.
Play the Game, an initiative by the Danish Institute for Sports Studies, goes even further. When adding up all the omitted emissions, such as from qualifying matches, TV broadcasts and merchandising, it estimated the World Cup’s carbon footprint at 70 million tonnes. For context, 9 million tonnes is equivalent to 6.5 million cars being driven for an entire year. Seventy million is multitudes more than that.
Future World Cups – a continent hopping tournament across Africa, Europe and South America in 2030 followed four years later by a fossil-fuel coated Saudi Arabian extravaganza – suggest that FIFA is not planning to address its stated climate commitments any time soon.
Poor form
The only indication that football’s governing has learnt any lessons from past mistakes can be found in the dropping of any carbon neutral claim before a ball is kicked at this year’s tournament.
Also, the organisers of this summer’s World Cup encourage laudable local environmental initiatives, such as waste reduction and energy efficiency.
However, as we assessed when reviewing the climate strategy of the 2024 Paris Olympic games, it is impossible – despite such commendable efforts – for organisers to reel in the environmental impact of a megaevent through what amounts to window dressing.
An event model that requires high levels of air travel, puts heavy pressure on existing infrastructure and showcases a rogue’s gallery of high-polluting sponsors is not one compatible with our warming planet.
How FIFA can get onside
While under Infantino’s stewardship a climate-responsible FIFA might seem as unlikely as a Scotland World Cup victory, it is entirely within the realm of possibility.
CMW’s Benja Faecks sits on the advisory panel of the ‘Sports for the Planet?’ initiative organised by the University of Lausanne that evaluates the environmental and social sustainability of major sports events to benchmark and streamline future event planning.
Our work on corporate action, which is applicable to events such as the World Cup, suggests that responsibility starts with an adequate, detailed and thorough approach to setting a carbon budget, and an internal taxation on emissions anticipated and made.
A carbon budget that doesn’t require a VAR check for FIFA to get onside when planning its future events would be aligned with the Paris Agreement’s 1.5°C global warming limit. Our Going for Green report criticises and challenges organisers of megaevents to radically rethink their event model – by first and foremost slide tackling the elephant in the room: event size.
Rather than cutting back, the 2026 tournament has been expanded to 48 teams for the first time, with a single match estimated to cause around 44,000 to 72,000 tonnes of CO2.
An expanded event means more fans, athletes, air travel and pressure on infrastructure. While the Olympics is no great shakes when it comes to planning a climate friendly games it has taken steps to cap the number of participating athletes.
We all love football but do we really need to sit through 104 matches to work out who is the champion? That is on top of the intense club-level competitions. Round the clock football not only puts a strain on the planet, but on athletes too.
In addition to downsizing, climate friendlier event planning would need to take into account global emission categories such as international transport – which for the 2026 games is far and away the greatest source of outputted emissions. A BBC report describes that England fans following their team through the 2026 tournament’s group stages could travel more than 1,760 miles between host cities, generating 3.5 tonnes of CO2 each.
FIFA’s headline sponsorship partners include the likes of Aramco, Qatar Airways and Coca-Cola, none of which you want on your team when championing climate and social issues. That Aramco – a company responsible for over 4% of global carbon dioxide emissions in 2024 – is sponsoring this World Cup “undermines any credibility FIFA has, or could have had, around sustainability claims,” according to the Carbon Majors database
Full time whistle
When Scotland captain Andy Robertson lifts the Jules Rimet trophy aloft, in my dreams if not at MetLife Stadium, on July 16, we will all marvel in wonder at the deserving achievement.
But, when the party’s over FIFA must reflect upon its approach. With the planet warming at an alarming rate, it is high time for football’s governing body to act before the full time whistle is blown. The beautiful game need not cost the Earth but should inspire players and fans to be responsible custodians of our planet.
