The group stage of the 2026 FIFA World Cup has set an attendance record with close to 5 million fans attending across the first 72 matches of the major national team soccer tournament.
The first-ever 48-team tournament, played across 16 host cities, saw a total of 4.6 million people attend group stage matches, creating an average crowd of 64,508 per match.
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This surpassed the all-time attendance record of 3.5 million set at the 1994 World Cup in the United States.
FIFA also recorded its highest-ever single-day tournament attendance on June 25, with 426,834 spectators.
According to FIFA, fans from 210 countries and territories attended the group stage, while the World Cup has had more than 80,000 people in attendance on a single match on eight occasions.
The biggest match attendance came in the tournament opener between co-hosts Mexico and South Africa, with 80,824 fans at the Azteca Stadium in Mexico City.
In terms of viewership, the tournament has already set some significant broadcast numbers, with more than 50 million viewers tuning in across Canada, Mexico, and the United States.
A total of 7.2 million viewers tuned into Mexico’s 2-0 win over South Africa on US network Fox, which made it the most-watched FIFA men’s World Cup opening match ever broadcast in English in the US.
Meanwhile, 10 million viewers watched Brazil vs Morocco on Fox, setting a new record. It was the most-watched non-US national team World Cup group stage broadcast in the history of English-language US television (a record that was broken twice during the tournament).
Canada's historic first World Cup victory attracted an average audience of 5.3 million, making it the country's most-watched group-stage match ever and the highest-rated national team broadcast.
In Brazil, meanwhile, the country’s opening match was the highest-rated television broadcast of 2026, with an average of 28.9 million viewers watching the 1-1 draw with Morocco. Media heavyweight Globo reached 49.9 million unique individuals across its platforms for the same match.
In China, the World Cup has already reached 205 million unique viewers on CCTV channels after 41 games. The live match with the highest number of unique viewers so far was Tunisia vs Japan, which was broadcast on CCTV5 and reached 24 million viewers.
The knockout stage of the tournament began yesterday with Canada defeating South Africa 1-0 in the round of 32 to become the first team through to the last-16.
Three more matches take place today – Brazil vs Japan, Germany vs Paraguay, and the Netherlands vs Morocco.
