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Heat, cooling breaks and a $250m advert row: the World Cup's other opponent

Spain have reached the final and Argentina or England will join them, but for a month the 2026 World Cup has been fighting the weather. Cooling breaks meant to protect players have become a story of their own.

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Heat, cooling breaks and a $250m advert row: the World Cup's other opponent

The 2026 World Cup will be settled at MetLife Stadium on 19 July, but for a month the tournament has been fighting a second opponent, and it has nothing to do with any of the four semi-finalists. It is the weather.

This is the first World Cup staged mostly in North American high summer, and the numbers set the scene. Climate Central, whose research was reported by Al Jazeera, found that 26 of the 104 matches could reach at least 26C on the Wet Bulb Globe Temperature index, the measure that folds humidity and sun into a single heat-stress figure, with five games at 28C WBGT or higher. Seventeen of those 26 fixtures are in air-conditioned stadiums; the rest are not. Dallas, Houston and Miami, along with the Mexican venues, were flagged as the worst offenders. Everton Fox, Al Jazeera's weather presenter, put it plainly: around half a dozen host cities are "likely to swelter".

FIFA's answer was a first: mandatory three-minute cooling breaks midway through each half, at every match, regardless of the reading on the thermometer. On paper it is a sensible piece of player protection. In practice it has become one of the tournament's running arguments.

The trouble is what the breaks are used for. ESPN reported that broadcasters have filled the stoppages with adverts, and Forbes put a figure on it, projecting that Fox alone could take up to $250m in extra advertising revenue from the new slots. A measure sold as welfare has ended up looking, to plenty of supporters, like a revenue line. Yahoo Sports catalogued the complaints from players, coaches and fans that the pauses too often kill a match's rhythm rather than the heat.

The players themselves are split. England captain Harry Kane, whose side face Argentina in Wednesday's semi-final in Atlanta, dismissed the whole issue, telling Al Jazeera the heat "won't be a factor" given how his team prepare. Others are less relaxed. A letter coordinated by the New Weather Institute and signed by dozens of professionals called on FIFA to strengthen its heat protocols, warning that afternoon kick-offs in extreme conditions put player welfare at risk. FIFA and the global players' union FIFPRO have kept an open line through the tournament, with the union pushing for firm, agreed heat rules for future competitions rather than one-off fixes.

Even the coaches who benefit from the breaks are hedging. Spain manager Luis de la Fuente, who watched his side beat France 2-0 in Dallas to reach the final, acknowledged the pauses were useful in genuine heat but far less necessary inside a cooled stadium. That, in a sentence, is the whole problem with a blanket rule: it treats a sweltering afternoon in Houston and a climate-controlled evening in Dallas exactly the same.

None of this is going away before Sunday. The final at MetLife, in New Jersey, is an evening kick-off, which should spare the two finalists the worst of it. The wider question is harder to shelve. FIFA has committed to a 48-team, 104-match tournament, much of it in the northern summer, and the science suggests the heat will only climb at future editions. The cooling break, love it or loathe it, is now part of the furniture. Whether it protects players or simply sells advertising is the argument the 2026 World Cup will hand on to the next one.

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