Tournament reaches unprecedented digital engagement milestones with 20 billion video views across platforms
Stadiums operate at near-full capacity with 99.7% occupancy and more than 6.25 million fans in attendance
Innovation and infrastructure underpin delivery with 161,000 km (or 100,000 miles) of fiber deployed and 13 million gigabytes of data transported across tournament and broadcast networks
The FIFA World Cup 2026™ has moved into the quarter-finals, with football's greatest stage continuing to set new benchmarks not only on the pitch, but across every dimension of the tournament experience.
As the competition intensifies, the numbers illustrate the scale and impact of the first-ever 48-team edition. From record-breaking digital engagement - including 20 billion video views across FIFA's platforms and viral global moments such as the "Viking Row" celebration, which has attracted 172 million views on TikTok - to packed stadiums and unprecedented operational delivery, the tournament continues to unite fans worldwide in ways never seen before.
The passion inside stadiums remains remarkable, with more than 6.25 million spectators attending matches so far at an average of over 65,000 per game, while millions more follow the action across digital platforms, broadcast and fan experiences in host cities and around the world. Across stadium hospitality areas, where over 600,000 packages have already been sold, 60% of guests are regular fans seeking premium experiences, while 40% are B2B, highlighting an emerging market trend.
Meanwhile, innovation behind the scenes continues to support the spectacle, with enough fibre installed to circle the Earth four times. A total of 13 million gigabytes of data was transported across the tournament and broadcast networks, and over one billion cyber threats were successfully mitigated.
History is being made on the pitch at every turn, with record-breaking individual performances, landmark goals and new milestones being achieved as the world's best teams compete for the ultimate prize in football. Youri Tielemans (Belgium) has covered the greatest distance at this FIFA World Cup: 61.8 km (around 38 miles). Kylian Mbappé (France) recorded the fastest sprint at 37.6 km/h (around 23 mph), which is faster than the speed limit in many residential areas. Meanwhile, Pape Gueye (Senegal) recorded the fastest goal-scoring attempt at goal at 131.9 km/h (around 82 mph), which is quicker than the typical speed limit on motorways.
See below for some of the official facts and figures following the conclusion of the round of 16 at the FIFA World Cup 2026™. ON THE PITCH
On to the quarter-finals There are four previous winners among the final eight nations - Argentina, England, France and Spain. Morocco have become the first African team to qualify for the quarter-finals for a second time, having also done so in 2022. Norway have reached the quarter-finals for the first time in their history, while Switzerland have reached the last eight for the first time since 1954.
Round of 16 matches highlights Paraguay 0-1 France: Kylian Mbappé's strike for France was their 150th in the history of the FIFA World Cup. They are just the fourth team to reach this milestone, after Brazil, Germany and Argentina.
Canada 0-3 Morocco: This is the first time an African nation has scored three goals in a knockout-round match in tournament history.
Brazil 1-2 Norway: Norway have reached the quarter-finals for the first time in their history. Neymar Jr has become just the second Brazilian player to score at four editions of the FIFA World Cup (2014, 2018, 2022 and 2026), after Pelé (1958, 1962, 1966 and 1970).
Mexico 2-3 England: At 23 years and six days, Jude Bellingham has become the youngest player ever to make ten FIFA World Cup appearances, surpassing Mario Kempes, who was 23 years and 334 days old when he featured for Argentina against Poland in 1978.
Portugal 0-1 Spain: Spain are the only team at the FIFA World Cup 2026 yet to concede a goal. Unai Simón has now gone 609 minutes without conceding in FIFA World Cup action, extending his record in the tournament's history.
USA 1-4 Belgium: Thibaut Courtois has become the first Belgian player to reach 20 appearances at the global showpiece. The 34-year-old is just the third goalkeeper in the history of the competition to reach this milestone, after Manuel Neuer (23) and Hugo Lloris (20).
Argentina 3-2 Egypt: La Albiceleste are unbeaten in their last 11 FIFA World Cup matches (W9 D2), their longest unbeaten run in tournament history. Lionel Messi has scored in a record-extending nine successive FIFA World Cup matches.
Switzerland 0-0 Colombia (a.e.t. 4-3 on pens): Switzerland have reached the quarter-finals for the first time since 1954. This is the first time Switzerland have won a penalty shootout at the FIFA World Cup, having lost their only previous shootout to Ukraine in 2006.
Goals
A total of 280 goals were scored in the 96 matches of the FIFA World Cup 2026, averaging 2.92 goals per game. Argentina are in the lead with 14 goals. There were 23 goals in the eight round-of-16 matches, averaging 2.88 per game.
Lionel Messi (ARG) tops the all-time scoring chart in FIFA World Cup history with 21 goals, followed by Kylian Mbappé (FRA) with 19. Enzo Fernández's winning goal in the match between Argentina and Egypt was the 3,000th goal in the history of the FIFA World Cup. Disciplinary
So far, a total of 259 yellow cards have been shown (2.70 on average), and 14 expulsions (0.15 on average) have been recorded.
The record breakers Lionel Messi (ARG) has scored eight goals, while Kylian Mbappé (FRA) and Erling Haaland (NOR) have each scored seven. This is the first time in the history of the FIFA World Cup that three players have each scored seven or more goals in a single edition.
Meanwhile, Mbappé has extended his record for goals scored in FIFA World Cup knockout matches to 11, surpassing all other players.
The stand-outs
Youri Tielemans (BEL) has covered the greatest distance at this FIFA World Cup: 61.8 km (around 38 miles). Timothy Castagne (BEL) recorded the longest distance in a single match (16.29 km, around 10 miles). Kylian Mbappé (FRA) recorded the fastest sprint at 37.6 km/h (around 23 mph).
Pape Gueye (SEN) scored the fastest goal with an attempt at goal at 131.9 km/h (around 82 mph), while Hans Vanaken (BEL) scored with the longest attempt at goal at 32.45 metres (around 106 feet). Passing & Distribution
So far, teams have completed 92,435 passes, averaging 942 per match. Argentina are in the lead with 3,446 passes, 3,146 of which were successful. A total of 3,282 successful crosses have been recorded to date, with Canada leading the way with 158.
Line-ups
So far, a total of 1,248 players from 48 countries have participated in the tournament, with 1,029 of them appearing in at least one match. Of these players, 916 were substitutes, with an average of 4.77 substitutions per match.
Team delegations
In addition to the players, a total of 2,528 team delegates have been involved in this FIFA World Cup.
Team movements
A total of 6,310 team transfers were completed, including 2,321 escorted movements by team bus and 2,201 movements by kit van. Additionally, 270 transfers between venues were completed (air and road).
FAN EXPERIENCE Stadium attendances A total of 6,259,584 people attended matches after the conclusion of the round of 16, filling an extraordinary 99.7% of available seats and creating an average crowd size of 65,204 per match.
The largest crowds of the tournament were at Mexico City Stadium (80,824 fans) for five FIFA World Cup 2026 matches, with a total attendance of 404,120.
The capacity crowd of 70,649 in Dallas took all-time FIFA World Cup attendance past the 50 million mark (50,020,653). FIFA Fan Festivals™
To date, more than 7.7 million fans gathered at FIFA Fan Festivals across the three host countries.
Stadium hospitality
A total of 607,350 hospitality packages have been sold and allocated. The most popular match so far was Brazil vs. Morocco, with 15,300 guests attending through the commercial and affiliate programmes. Hospitality areas for the final match are expected to host over 16,000 guests.
Sixty per cent of hospitality guests are regular fans looking for a premium experience, while 40 per cent are B2B clients. The three host nations - the United States, Mexico and Canada, in that order - account for 82% of customers. The UK, Brazil, Argentina, Qatar, India, Colombia and China complete the top 10. Hospitality packages have been sold to guests from 154 countries.
A total of 3,166 premium hospitality environments are being activated by 27,969 accredited personnel to provide guests with a variety of exclusive settings and experiences. More than 700 unique menus have been developed across the different hospitality product tiers and host venues. Enough hospitality access wristbands have been produced to span 2,988 football pitches if placed end to end. The volume of non-alcoholic and alcoholic beverages served throughout the hospitality venues would fill more than three Olympic-sized swimming pools. Music and entertainment
The Official FIFA World Cup 2026™ Album continues to build strong global momentum, with more than 575 million streams across all digital streaming platforms, surpassing the half‑billion mark this week and representing 19% growth compared to the previous week.
The tournament's Official Song, Dai Dai, is leading the global charts, holding the number one position on Spotify's Top 50 Global daily chart since 3 July and topping both the YouTube Music Video chart and the Billboard Global 200 (excluding the United States) this week.
Meanwhile, the Official FIFA World Cup 2026™ Anthem DNA continues to drive engagement across platforms, with its music video surpassing 10 million views within four days of release. Broadcast Canada's historic tournament run came to a close on Saturday, capturing an exceptional average audience of 5.4 million across linear and streaming platforms, reaching 82.6% market share on linear channels nationwide and breaking records as the most-watched Canadian match ever in FIFA World Cup™ history and the country's biggest non-Final broadcast on record.
Mexico's Round of 16 clash against England became the nation's most-watched FIFA World Cup™ match of the 21st century, with an average audience of 36 million across Televisa (20.7M) and Azteca (15.3M), breaking all broadcast records and beating the previous record of 35.1 million set against Ecuador.
The United States' Round of 32 victory over Bosnia and Herzegovina officially became the most-watched football match in U.S. television history recorded to date, attracting a record-breaking combined audience of 36.2 million viewers across FOX and Telemundo. International Broadcast Center (IBC)
The IBC covers an area of 43,648 square metres (469,823.16 square feet), and is home to up to 3,400 people from FIFA, HBS, and over 56 media partners who work there every day. There are six operational VAR rooms.
Food & Beverage More than 1.4 million bottles of water and 5 million beers have been sold during the tournament. More than 1 million concession items have been sold across Stadium Fan Experience areas alone, with the top three items being beer, water and pizza.
The humble hot dog has continued its rise in popularity, with sales increasing from 300,000 during the Group Stage to 420,000 by the conclusion of the Round of 16. Total consumed hot dogs laid end-to-end would stretch approximately 63 km - the length of more than 700 football pitches.
Snack time was match time, with fans purchasing more than 55,000 bags of chips, candy and other snack items during the Round of 16. Menus reflected the tournament's global flavour, with supporters choosing everything from hot dogs and pizza to tacos, crab fries, choripán, birria and shawarma. Merchandise
Fans have also been picking up new gear to support their teams, with more than 103,000 scarves sold, making them the tournament's top-selling merchandise item. The top-selling National Teams are USA, Mexico, Canada, England, Argentina, Brazil, Spain, France, Germany and Portugal. The Host Cities with the highest merchandise sales are Atlanta, Dallas, Los Angeles, Houston and Boston.
FIFA Fan IDs To date, over 4.2 million FIFA FAN IDs have been distributed, with over 37% of these being activated (i.e. people tapping or scanning the card). This figure exceeds the average of around 20% for high-performing event/service QR codes.
Digital and social media engagement There were 30 billion impressions, 1.7 billion engagements and 14.5 billion video views from the preferred platforms, TikTok and YouTube, bringing the total number of video views to 20 billion. All of these metrics are significantly higher than those of the FIFA World Cup 2022 for an equal number of days in the tournament. Social media impressions are up 130%, engagement is up +160% and video views are up +485%.
The 'Viking Row' celebration video is the most viewed on TikTok with 174 million views, followed by Neymar congratulating Norwegian players (70m). Shakira and Burna Boy's performance of 'Dai Dai' at the opening match has received 135 million views on Instagram and 49 million on YouTube. On YouTube, Cristiano Ronaldo's first-ever knockout goal in the FIFA World Cup reached 75 million views. The reaction to Luis Romo's goal in the Mexico-Korea Republic match at the Mexico City FIFA Fan Festival is still the most-viewed video on Facebook with 82 million views.
There were 187 million unique visitors to FIFA.com during the tournament (48 million of whom were from the host countries), representing growth of +25% compared to the same number of days in the FIFA World Cup 2022. There were 50 million aggregated users to the FIFA Tournament App and the FIFA Official App during the tournament, with an average of 1.15 million visitors per day to the former. A total of 54 million new followers were gained across all platforms during the tournament, including 23 million on TikTok alone. FIFA is now the most-followed sports account worldwide on this platform, with 80 million followers, and is in the top 10 most-followed accounts overall.
There were 10 million new FIFA ID registrations during the tournament (2.7 million of which were from the host countries), which is more than double the number for the full 2022 tournament. Since the launch of the FIFA Rewards programme, 3.1 million people have joined (1.1 million of whom joined during the tournament), with 70% of them being active users.
'Inside FIFA' welcomed 17 million visitors during the group stage, 22.6 million during the round of 32 and 26.5 million during the round of 16. This is almost 180% more than during the FIFA World Cup 2022. More than 90% of this increase is attributed to the FIFA Coca-Cola World Ranking, which is live for the first time during the FIFA World Cup.
Almost 60% of players use FIFA's content distribution tool and 47 out of the 48 participating member associations have downloaded assets from the Digital Hub.
In terms of global news coverage (online and social media), 42 million stories and posts were published between 9 June and 7 July, generating 7 billion engagements. Gaming 130m+ fans with an interest in gaming engaged across FIFA's Digital Football portfolio. Over 100 million hours of gameplay and fan engagement were generated so far during the tournament.
The "FIFA World Cup™: Launch Edition" on Netflix Games has an average player rating of 4.2/5. FIFA Heroes was downloaded over one million times in its first five days and is also the number one App Store game in the UK, Spain and Turkey. So far, 21.3 million people have visited FIFA Super Soccer on Roblox during the tournament. There are eight digital football experiences available across Epic Games, Roblox and Netflix Games during the tournament.
The FIFA World Cup PlayZone received 28 million visitors during the tournament, which is already more than double the number of visitors to the full FIFA World Cup 2022 (+137%). Since the launch, there have been 3.6 million active players (also surpassing the number for the full 2022 tournament), with 2.4 million active Fantasy players and 1.2 million active Bracket Challenge players. Lego Trophy The round of 16 also saw the unveiling of a giant LEGO® FIFA World Cup Trophy at Rockefeller Plaza in New York. Constructed from over 1.36 million LEGO® bricks, it is one of the largest LEGO® creations ever made. Standing at 8.47 metres (27 ft) tall, it took a team of 59 experts 7,040 hours to bring it to life.
OPERATIONS Tournament Operations The majority of fans arrive at the stadium two hours before kick-off. At stadiums with double perimeters, fans are spending an average of 20 minutes in the Stadium Fan Experience area. More than 20,000 fans have bought tickets for behind-the-scenes stadium tours. Pitch management A total of 16 stadium pitches and 77 training pitches have been delivered. All pitches are mown daily and line marked two to three times a week. A total of 130,000 square metres of custom-grown turf was used for the stadium pitches, and an additional 170,000 square metres was procured to support training site operations.
The estimated number of people supporting pitch maintenance is 975 (excluding third-party support teams). USD 5 million worth of field of play and training equipment (goals, nets, corner flags, cones, mini-goals, etc.) has been distributed to stadiums, training sites and venues as legacy items. Fan Operations
The Host Cities' WhatsApp channels now have over 1 million followers and have distributed over 2,000 posts. A total of 7.2 million 'Know Before You Go' emails have been sent to fans attending matches, and 2.75 million clicks have been identified. A total of 41,755 restricted items have been stored.
After the round of 16, the Audio Descriptive Commentary (ADC) had 40,000 users, and 900 sensory bags have been distributed. Four hundred and fifty wheelchairs have been made available for assistance, of which 126 were donated by FIFA. So far today, 7,875 individual sign language streams have been accessed through matches. Haptic boards were made available at four venues and 19 matches. Technology A total of 13 petabytes of data have been transported across FIFA's tournament and broadcast networks. More than 100,000 miles of fibre have been deployed - enough to circle the Earth four times - alongside 4,000 network devices supporting operations and venue connectivity. A total of 10,000 video distribution endpoints are delivering live content across venues, while a private 5G network across all 16 stadiums is powering referee camera services.
In addition, 5,000 radios have been deployed and 2,600 spectrum requests approved and activated. Across FIFA's digital ecosystem, more than one billion emails have been delivered, with 11.3 million SharePoint documents managed, over 13 million Microsoft Teams messages exchanged, 19.5 million OneDrive files stored and shared, and 57 TB of Exchange Online data managed.
Cyber Security
More than one billion cyberattacks have been blocked during the tournament, with over 11,000 malicious domains identified and neutralised. A total of 9 petabytes of web traffic have been securely delivered to fans and stakeholders, while 1,015 websites and digital platforms are being actively protected. In addition, 304 TB of security data have been analysed to monitor and mitigate threats.
Volunteers
So far, a total of 43,328 volunteers from 162 countries and territories have supported tournament operations, continuing to play a vital role at the heart of the FIFA World Cup.
Workforce
A total of 4,738 people from 134 different nationalities (45 of the 48 competing nations) make up the workforce. 40% are female and 60% are male. 43% are based at competition sites, 34% at non-competition sites, 19% at the tournament headquarters and 4% at the IBC in Dallas. The youngest member is 17 and the oldest is 79, with an average age of 39.
Media
So far, a total of 5,230 accredited media representatives from around the world have attended the FIFA World Cup 2026™, checking in at the stadium 33,146 times in the process. FIFA has also hosted 282 official press conferences to date.
