‘It feels like being in an oven’ – the ‘shocking’ experience awaiting fans at the 2026 World Cup | OneFootball

What will it actually feel like to follow your team around at the 2026 World Cup?

The football conversation has understandably focused on the action on the pitch: England’s prospects; the expanded 48-team format; the vast distances between host cities; the spectacle of the biggest World Cup in history.

But after spending several weeks travelling across the United States filming a new documentary series ahead of the tournament, creator Alex Moneypenny believes many supporters may be overlooking the factor that could shape their experience more than any tactical battle or team selection debate.

The heat.

Moneypenny and Laurence McKenna are the faces of Route ’26: Losing Sight of Goal, a new five-part docuseries produced with Pledgeball that launched this week. Travelling through several of the communities that will host or be affected by the 2026 World Cup, the pair set out to explore the intersection between football, climate and the fan experience awaiting supporters when the tournament begins next June.

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What they discovered was often eye-opening. One stop in particular left a lasting impression.

While Phoenix is not a World Cup host city, it offers perhaps the clearest glimpse into the environmental conditions that could await supporters elsewhere across the southern United States. Moneypenny attended a Phoenix Rising game where temperatures remained around 39°C at 7pm.

“It feels like being in an oven,” he tells Football365.

Many British supporters will read that and think: hot, certainly, but manageable. Moneypenny suspects that is a dangerous misunderstanding.

“People think it’s just a bit warmer,” he says. “It’s not. It’s the dryness of the heat.”

The reality hit him almost immediately. Having arrived from Los Angeles only hours earlier, he stepped out at the stadium and struggled to comprehend how football was continuing as normal. Players were warming up. Fans were arriving. Children were kicking balls around outside.

What surprised him even more was the reaction of local supporters. Or rather, the lack of reaction. “They just adapt,” he says. “They play later, they drink more water, they bring cooling equipment and they get on with it.”

For residents of Arizona, such temperatures are simply part of life. But World Cup supporters arriving from England, Germany or Argentina will not have spent years adjusting to those conditions.

That is where Moneypenny sees a potential problem. Football fandom often involves long days spent outdoors. Travelling between venues. Exploring host cities. Gathering in fan zones. Drinking alcohol. Walking considerable distances between transport hubs and stadiums. In extreme heat, all of those things become more physically demanding.

During filming, one Arizona resident explained that surviving the summer requires preparation that starts the day before. Hydration on matchday itself is often too late. Moneypenny found even light exercise difficult.

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The concern is not simply discomfort. The filmmakers spoke to experts studying the physiological impacts of heat exposure, who explained how the risks can continue long after someone has cooled down, increasing the likelihood of cardiovascular complications and other health issues.

For travelling supporters, that raises an uncomfortable possibility.

“If it is played in that sort of heat,” Moneypenny says, “there’s almost no point having conversations about anything else. The tactical conversations, the line-ups, all of it becomes secondary because that’s what you’re battling against.”

That observation applies to fans as much as players. The conditions themselves risk becoming one of the defining stories of the tournament.

For Moneypenny, his experiences on his American road trip reinforced a belief that football can play an important role in making environmental issues feel less distant.

Climate change is often discussed through scientific reports, emissions targets and long-term projections – all important, but not always easy for people to connect with.

Football, on the other hand, provides a human entry point. When rising temperatures affect players, supporters and matchdays, or when communities connected to the game are already living with environmental change, the issue suddenly feels far more immediate.

“Putting it in football terms is really key,” Moneypenny says. “People hear things like climate change or two degrees of warming, but it can be difficult to conceptualise what that actually means. Football gives people something they already care about.”

During his travels, he found himself having conversations about wildfires, extreme heat and disappearing coastlines with people who might never have described themselves as environmental campaigners. What united them wasn’t politics or policy, but a shared connection to place, community and football.

That is why he believes the sport has a unique ability to open up discussions that might otherwise feel overwhelming. Football alone cannot solve the challenges posed by climate change, but it can help people understand them.

And as the world turns its attention towards the biggest World Cup ever staged, that may prove to be one of the tournament’s most significant legacies. Beyond the goals, the trophies and the headlines, it offers an opportunity to understand how environmental change is already reshaping the places where football is played, watched and loved.