FIFA’s latest shame: the environmental campaign behind most polluting World Cup in history | OneFootball

FIFA want you to hold up a green card for the planet. The trouble is that the organisation’s own flagship tournament increasingly resembles a straight red for it instead.

As part of their sustainability messaging in recent years, FIFA have promoted the slogan “Green Card for the Planet”, encouraging supporters, players and federations to pledge environmentally friendly actions while football supposedly leads the way on climate awareness.

Yet the closer the 2026 World Cup gets, the more that campaign begins to feel like football’s equivalent of handing out reusable straws on a private jet.

The tournament across the United States, Canada and Mexico is now projected to become the most environmentally damaging World Cup ever staged. Not merely the biggest. Not merely the most commercially bloated. The most polluting.

Researchers from Scientists for Global Responsibility estimate the competition could generate around nine million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent emissions, almost double the average footprint of recent World Cups. Under worst-case travel scenarios, emissions linked to aviation alone could reportedly reach 13.7 million tonnes.

That is the unavoidable consequence of a tournament that has become a monument to football’s obsession with relentless expansion. More teams. More matches. More flights. More sponsors. More consumption.

The 2026 edition will feature 48 teams instead of 32 and stretch to 104 matches, 40 more than the previous format. It will also be spread across an entire continent.

There is something almost perversely symbolic about football’s climate crisis arriving through excess. The sport has spent years telling everyone it cares deeply about sustainability while simultaneously constructing competitions that require supporters to fly from Vancouver to Miami via Mexico City in the middle of summer.

An England fan following every knockout round journey to the final could personally generate around 3.5 tonnes of CO2 emissions, according to analysis by BBC Sport. That is roughly equivalent to heating an average British home for more than a year and a half.

And those figures are merely individual snapshots within a tournament expected to attract millions of travelling supporters, corporate guests, media crews and commercial partners.

This is where the “Green Card for the Planet” messaging begins to collapse under the weight of its own contradiction. FIFA’s environmental campaigns ask fans to recycle, use public transport and think sustainably. But the governing body has simultaneously created a competition structure that makes mass long-haul aviation unavoidable.

No amount of compostable burger trays in fan parks can meaningfully offset a tournament dependent upon transcontinental air travel.

The criticism has become sharper because football has spent the last decade aggressively branding itself as environmentally conscious. Clubs announce net-zero targets. Governing bodies publish climate strategies. Broadcasters fill tournament coverage with sustainability messaging.

Then the sport’s premier event arrives looking like a climate stress test.

Even the physical conditions awaiting players and supporters are becoming part of the climate story. Multiple studies published ahead of the tournament have warned that dangerous heat conditions could affect matches across several host cities.

Research examining Wet Bulb Globe Temperature thresholds – the combined measure of heat, humidity and solar radiation used to assess heat stress risk – suggests more than 26 matches may be played in conditions above recommended safety levels.

Miami has emerged as one particular concern, with projections suggesting every World Cup match there could exceed heat-risk thresholds for players and fans alike. Compared with the last World Cup hosted in the United States in 1994, the number of matches expected to surpass critical heat benchmarks has risen dramatically due to climate change.

Football is now caught in the strange spectacle of staging climate-threatening tournaments while simultaneously grappling with the consequences of climate change inside those tournaments.

There is also the sponsorship question hanging awkwardly over all of this. FIFA’s controversial partnership with Saudi energy giant Aramco has drawn fierce criticism from environmental campaigners and players alike. More than 100 women footballers publicly objected to the deal last year, arguing it fundamentally undermined football’s sustainability claims.

Again, the contradiction is almost too perfect. The organisation promoting a “green card” initiative is also financially aligned with one of the world’s largest oil producers.

This is not entirely new territory for FIFA. The governing body’s insistence that the 2022 World Cup in Qatar would be “carbon neutral” was heavily disputed by climate experts, who accused organisers of dramatically underestimating the tournament’s true environmental cost.

But 2026 feels different because the scale is so much larger and so much harder to disguise. You cannot meaningfully market a continent-wide, 104-match mega-event as environmentally responsible without sounding increasingly detached from reality.

FIFA point toward mitigation measures. Existing stadiums are largely being reused. Public transport infrastructure is being promoted. Regional scheduling is intended to reduce some travel demands. Cooling breaks and heat-management protocols are also planned.

Yet the core issue remains stubbornly unsolvable. The tournament itself has become too large and too geographically sprawling to reconcile comfortably with serious climate commitments.

That is the uncomfortable truth sitting underneath all the branding exercises and sustainability slogans. Football’s governing bodies continue to behave as though environmental responsibility is something that can simply be layered on top of endless commercial growth.

The 2026 World Cup may still produce iconic moments, unforgettable goals and astonishing atmospheres. It will almost certainly break viewing records and generate billions in revenue.

But while FIFA asks the football world to raise a green card for the planet, their own competition is rapidly becoming the clearest evidence yet that the sport still cannot bring itself to choose sustainability over expansion.