World Cup 2026 Schedule: Every Round, Date and Kick-Off
From the June 11 opener in Mexico City to the July 19 final at MetLife Stadium, here is the full World Cup 2026 schedule and how to track your team's fixtures.
The 2026 World Cup runs from June 11 to July 19, 2026, the longest and largest edition ever: 48 teams, 104 matches and 16 host cities spread across the United States, Mexico and Canada. It opens on June 11 with co-host Mexico facing South Africa at the Estadio Azteca in Mexico City, the first stadium in history to stage three World Cup opening matches. The group stage then fills nearly every day of the calendar through June 27, with 12 groups of four teams each playing three matches apiece.
The format is new, so the calendar is too. The top two from every group advance, joined by the eight best third-placed sides, creating a 32-team knockout bracket for the first time. That Round of 32 is played from June 28 to July 3, immediately after the groups wrap up. It is the stage where the field is cut in half and the margin for error disappears, so a single result over those six days can end a campaign that looked comfortable a week earlier.
From there the bracket tightens fast. The Round of 16 runs July 4 to 7, the quarter-finals follow on July 9 to 11, and the two semi-finals land on July 14 and 15. The third-place match is set for July 18 at Hard Rock Stadium in Miami, and the final is on Sunday, July 19 at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey, listed officially as the New York New Jersey Stadium. From the knockouts onward the heavyweights collide, which is exactly when the title race tightens around the favourites.
Finding your team's path is straightforward. Start on the groups page to see which of the 12 groups your side landed in and the three opponents it will face between June 11 and 27. From there, our match centre lists every fixture with dates and host cities, and each national team page lets you follow a single country's route round by round. Because the bracket is seeded by group finish, you can map out a potential path to the final before a ball is kicked, then update it as results come in.
If you want to know not just when the matches are but how they might end, our model already prices the whole bracket. Spain lead our title odds, just ahead of Argentina, with France, Brazil and England completing the top five. Read the full breakdown in our World Cup 2026 predictions, or jump straight into the simulator to run your own bracket from the June 11 kick-off all the way to the July 19 final.
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