France and Norway open World Cup, Cape Verde stuns Spain

Cape Verde’s scoreless draw with Spain sent fans spilling into Boston City Hall Plaza, where a debut World Cup appearance instantly became a shared celebration and shock. FIFA called the result a “seismic shock,” and in Group H the mood split hard, with Uruguay left with long faces after defeat and elimination.

Across town and across the bracket, French supporters packed a watch party in Brooklyn as Ousmane Dembélé scored three times before halftime and France finished Norway 4-1 to close its group. The noise in the room rose with each goal, then shifted into the kind of relief that only comes when a favorite handles business and keeps moving.

The scenes are playing out inside the first 48-team World Cup, the 23rd edition of the tournament, which began on June 11 and is scheduled to end with the final on July 19, 2026. For the first time, the tournament is spread across three host countries, Canada, Mexico and the United States, and it is being staged through 104 matches that turn ordinary weekend spaces into collective viewing sites.

FIFA has confirmed 13 FIFA Fan Festival sites across the host cities, creating giant-screen gathering places for local residents and traveling supporters alike. That has intensified the emotional whiplash of a mega-tournament day, with jubilation and heartbreak often unfolding within the same stadium corridors, downtown plazas and transit routes, sometimes only blocks apart.

Cabo Verde’s draw with Spain carried added weight because the island nation arrived as a World Cup debutant, and the result immediately lifted its supporters into rarefied company. Spain, Cabo Verde, Saudi Arabia and Uruguay share a Group H that has already turned into one of the tournament’s most closely watched, while the contrast between Boston’s celebration and Uruguay’s exit showed how quickly the expanded format can compress fate, hope and disappointment into a single afternoon.