The quarter-finals of soccer's FIFA World Cup have brought in huge TV audiences across three of the four victorious nations – England, Spain, and France – over the last few days.
In the UK, commercial free-to-air broadcaster ITV secured a peak audience of 16.4 million for England's 2-1 win against Norway (which required extra time for the match to be settled).
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This peak audience represents the highest such figure for ITV since the final of soccer's 2024 European Championships, in which England lost to Spain.
It is also the largest viewership for any channel or streaming service so far this calendar year, ITV has claimed.
ITV is splitting live World Cup rights in the UK with the BBC, the nation's public-service broadcaster. The latter network covered England's previous game, a 3-2 win over host nation Mexico, also bringing in significant viewing numbers (even though the game started at 2am UK time).
The BBC now holds live rights to England's semi-final versus Argentina.
In France, meanwhile, the nation's 2-0 triumph over Morocco was watched on the free-to-air TF1 broadcaster by an average of 16.1 million people last Thursday evening.
This represents the highest TV viewership for any French TV program so far in 2026, and comes without the addition of any numbers from pay-TV broadcaster BeIN Sports, which also showed the game in France.
The peak figure for the game in California, on TF1, was 18.1 million.
TF1 and BeIN are both covering the World Cup in France – BeIN is airing all 104 games live, while TF1 holds rights to 54 (including all France's fixtures).
The previous record audience on French TV for this World Cup came during the country's opening match against Senegal, with the 3-1 triumph bringing in over 14 million viewers on TF1 and BeIN combined.
Elsewhere, in Spain, the country's last-minute 2-1 victory over Belgium in the last eight of the World Cup achieved an average audience of 11.45 million across the range of Spanish platforms covering the game.
This included the La 1 and La 2 channels on which national broadcaster RTVE was showing the action, and the Spanish platform of subscription sports streaming service DAZN (DAZN and RTVE are both showing the tournament).
That audience figure, it has been reported, equates to a market share of 76.5%.
In terms of unique viewers, meanwhile, the match, which for a Spanish audience took place at 9pm last Friday, reached 15.9 million.
Spanish media has also reported that, since the World Cup began in mid-June, 75.3% of the Spanish population has tuned into live action at one point.
The semi-final line-up sees France and Spain face off on Tuesday, before England takes on Argentina on Wednesday evening (for a UK audience).
