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Jupiter Intelligence Partners With World Cup 2026 Climate Awareness Campaign
It’s called football, association football, or soccer depending on where you live, but the billions of people worldwide who love it, and those who play it—for fun, amateur sport, or money—have a common name for it. The Beautiful Game.
Every four years, its glittering global showcases, the FIFA World Cup and the FIFA Women’s World Cup, attract both the greatest international players to represent their native countries and the attention and passions of billions of followers from every hemisphere.
Now some of those elite players want to leverage these colossal sporting events to focus the world’s attention on the escalating global climate crisis. The non-profit organizations Football For Future and Common Goal have launched the World Cup 2026 Climate Action Campaign—a landmark initiative that’s designed to transform how the sport understands and responds to the climate crisis.
Jupiter is “pitching in,” supporting the campaign by supplying our gold-standard, science-led physical climate risk analysis to a study that projects how climate perils will impact both World Cup conditions in 2026, 2030 and 2034, and the “grassroots” football pitches across the planet that are the foundation of the sport itself.
The study assesses physical risk impacts of climate change for this year and 2050 using data from Jupiter ClimateScore™ Global, based on IPCC SSP5-8.5, the "worst-case" scenario in which fossil fuel use continues to grow rapidly and global temperatures increase by approximately 3.3°C to 5.7°C by the end of the century, compared to the 1986–2005 average.
“Football connects the world—and now, it also helps reveal what’s at stake in the climate crisis. Jupiter’s climate risk analytics and insights spotlight the growing threats climate change poses to owners, players, fans, and stadiums alike. From billion-dollar venues to grassroots pitches, the game we love depends on safe, resilient conditions. We hope this report raises awareness and sparks action—to protect the Beautiful Game and the planet it depends on. Because climate resilience, like football, is a global team effort.” — Rich Sorkin, CEO and Co-founder, Jupiter Intelligence
Even Glamorous Venues Can’t Evade Climate Perils
The World Cup is an ideal platform to spread the climate resilience message. The 2022 championship match was watched by an estimated 1.5 billion viewers alone; FIFA, football’s governing body, estimates that over six billion people will engage with World Cup 2026.
Its ultimate final stage returns to North America for the first time since 1994, with games to be played in sixteen elite stadia in Mexico, the USA, and Canada. Those venues, many of them costing well more than USD $1 billion to build, boast a plethora of amenities for players and spectators alike, even domed facilities with “climate control.” They’re located in cities among the most sophisticated on the continent in terms of public infrastructure—motorways and public transport, electricity grids, and water supply and sanitary sewer systems.
Yet, as our report shows, they’re vulnerable to severe weather and perilous conditions caused by climate change: extreme heat (32-35°C /90-95°F) that disrupts or postpones matches, prolonged rainfall that floods host cities and pitches, wind speeds that grossly distort playing conditions, and water stress and shortages that impact cooling systems, hydration, and sanitation.
Grassroots Football Grounds Face Disproportionate Challenges
But these impacts are only part of the story. Those who play football come from diverse backgrounds in the developed and developing worlds. The pitches where children learn the sport, and where adults may play it recreationally all their lives, can be found anywhere from working-class cities and impoverished rural areas to more affluent suburbs.
The Future For Football/Common Goal/Jupiter report describes the challenges that grassroots pitches face from climate change through the lens of the places where 18 world-class players began their careers. For example:
- Rosario, Argentina, where Lionel Messi’s father first taught him to play, is an urban, industrialized, working-class city situated along a major river (the Paraná); it’s prey to flooding, extreme weather events, and the urban heat island effect.
- Basyoun, in Egypt’s Nile Delta, is where a young Mohamed Salah first came to prominence. This major commercial and agricultural region, located between Cairo and Alexandria, is threatened by water scarcity, and extremes of heat and cold.
- Seine-Saint-Denis is the Paris working-class banlieue that’s home to AS Bondy, where Kylian Mbappé received his early training. The département, which contains greater Paris’s largest immigrant population, is threatened by flooding from prolonged storms, heat and water stress, and poor air quality.
- Australia’s Tim Cahill spent his formative years with two grassroots football clubs located in Sydney’s Inner West region. Hazards such as drought, extreme rainfall, and especially flooding are projected to worsen significantly there by 2050, raising urgent concerns about the need for adaptation. Wind speeds that already exceed the 60km/h threshold are forecast to rise to 87km/h by 2050.
- Waltham Forest, the outer London borough and home of Ridgeway Rovers FC, which launched David Beckham’s career, lies within one of the least vulnerable of the 182 locations ranked by the Global Adaptation Initiative. Still, it’s challenged by continued high wind speeds and increasing precipitation and heat stress under the SSP5-8.5 scenario.
Overall, the report finds that, from today through 2050: all 18 locations are vulnerable to extreme precipitation and high winds; 14 will see activity disrupted by temperatures too high for human safety; and half will suffer from water scarcity and drought.
A climate disaster can happen anywhere. But when it strikes underserved, under-resourced areas, it can create a profound humanitarian crisis, disproportionately affecting the most vulnerable populations and harming most those least able to adapt.
“Football is not separate from the climate crisis,” the report notes. “It is shaped by it, impacted by it, and increasingly defined by it.”
Jupiter’s contribution to the World Cup 2026 Climate Action Campaign helps Football For Future and Common Goal underscore the grave threats that our changing climate pose to The Beautiful Game and our planet itself. Today–and tomorrow.
Download the report here. If you would like to speak directly to a Jupiter climate expert, contact us here.
