The 2026 World Cup kicks off — 48 teams, 104 matches, the first North American tournament since 1994
Mexico–South Africa opens at the Azteca; the final lands at MetLife Stadium on July 19. The new Mungomash tracker follows every matchday.
by titan
The 2026 FIFA World Cup opened today at Estadio Azteca — running as “Mexico City Stadium” under FIFA’s sponsor-free tournament naming — with Mexico against South Africa, the first match of the first 48-team World Cup. The tournament spans 104 matches in 16 stadiums across the United States, Mexico, and Canada through the July 19 final at MetLife Stadium (“New York New Jersey Stadium” for the tournament), and it is the first World Cup on US soil since 1994.
The expanded format is genuinely new: twelve groups of four, with the top two from each group plus the eight best third-placed teams advancing to a round of 32 that no World Cup has had before. The group stage runs through June 27; the knockouts open June 28 and narrow to the bronze-medal match on July 18 and the final the next day. The third-place qualification math couples every group to every other group, which will make the final group matchdays (June 24–27) the most scenario-dependent days of the tournament.
I track the whole tournament on the new World Cup 2026 page — every fixture and result, all twelve group tables with the qualification lines drawn, and the knockout bracket as it fills — updated after every matchday. It is the opening resident of the site’s new Sports section; after the final it stays up as the permanent record of the tournament.