BBC Sport to show all 104 matches at 2026 World Cup

BBC Sport will show every one of the 104 matches at the 2026 FIFA World Cup, turning football’s biggest tournament into a month-long broadcast operation across television, radio and streaming. The tournament will run from June 11 to July 19, 2026, with games spread across 16 host cities in the United States, Canada and Mexico.

The scale matters because this will be the first men’s World Cup expanded to 48 teams, lifting the total from the familiar 64-match format to 104 fixtures. That leaves broadcasters not just covering a final and knockout rounds, but managing an uninterrupted sequence of group games, travel days and overlapping kick-off times across three countries. The final will be staged at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey.

BBC Sport’s coverage will run across BBC TV channels and BBC iPlayer, with live audio commentary on BBC Radio 5 Live and 5 Sports Extra, plus digital coverage on BBC Sounds. ITV will share the UK rights equally and will show live fixtures free-to-air across ITV1, ITV4 and ITVX. The two broadcasters will also share the final, preserving free-to-air access to the tournament for UK viewers.

The rights deal was confirmed in December 2024 for both the 2026 and 2030 men’s World Cups. That arrangement gives BBC Sport and ITV Sport a clear commercial incentive to spread the event across television, radio and streaming platforms, keeping audiences inside their own ecosystems for nearly six weeks. For broadcasters, a 104-match World Cup is not just a sports assignment but an exercise in scheduling, production depth and audience retention on a scale that pushes well beyond the 64-game tournaments viewers have known for years.

The BBC’s presentation plans will also look different from what many viewers expected. Gary Lineker had been widely associated with the corporation’s World Cup coverage, but the BBC confirmed in May 2025 that he would leave after Match of the Day and would not front its 2026 tournament coverage. That leaves BBC Sport to present the biggest World Cup ever staged with a different on-air team, while still carrying the burden of delivering every match live or in highlights across its TV, radio and digital services.