This year’s World Cup games could be sizzling. Here’s what’s being done to prepare for extreme heat

As glob­al tem­per­a­tures rise, ex­treme heat could threat­en ath­letes, fans, work­ers and of­fi­cials dur­ing this year’s World Cup games.

Six­teen cities across the Unit­ed States, Mex­i­co and Cana­da will be host­ing the 2026 World Cup in June and Ju­ly. On av­er­age, Ju­ly is the hottest month of the year for the con­tigu­ous U.S., ac­cord­ing to the Na­tion­al Ocean­ic and At­mos­pher­ic Ad­min­is­tra­tion, and it’s on­ly got­ten warmer since record-keep­ing be­gan in 1895. Wet bulb globe tem­per­a­tures, which fac­tor hu­mid­i­ty, wind speed, sun an­gle and more, could ex­ceed 90-Fahren­heit (32-Cel­sius) in the af­ter­noons in the Texas cities of Dal­las and Hous­ton and Mon­ter­rey, Mex­i­co, re­search shows.

“Al­most all of the host lo­ca­tions, 14 out of 16 of them, ex­pe­ri­ence lev­els of ex­treme heat, which could be po­ten­tial­ly dan­ger­ous to play­ers, match of­fi­cials and pos­si­bly spec­ta­tors,” said Don­al Mul­lan, a se­nior lec­tur­er at Queen’s Uni­ver­si­ty Belfast who led a pa­per last year ex­am­in­ing the heat risks of this year’s host cities. Some sta­di­ums have the ad­van­tage of be­ing ful­ly cov­ered, re­duc­ing the risks.

Ex­po­sure to heat, am­pli­fied dur­ing ex­er­tion, can lead to nau­sea, de­hy­dra­tion, headaches, stroke and, in ex­treme cas­es, death. Wor­ries from some that mil­lions of peo­ple could be ex­posed dur­ing the tour­na­ment were am­pli­fied in March, when record-break­ing tem­per­a­tures hit large swaths of the U.S. And with glob­al tem­per­a­tures ris­ing be­cause of pol­lu­tion from burn­ing oil, gas and coal, sci­en­tists have warned that stag­ing soc­cer tour­na­ments in the sum­mer is get­ting more dan­ger­ous.

The 2022 World Cup tour­na­ment in Qatar was moved from sum­mer to win­ter be­cause of the threat of ex­treme heat. Last year’s Club World Cup ex­pe­ri­enced a heat wave that sent tem­per­a­tures soar­ing in­to the 90s-Fahren­heit (32s-Cel­sius) and above in many ar­eas. Fol­low­ing the event, the soc­cer play­ers’ glob­al union warned that ex­treme heat would like­ly be an even big­ger prob­lem at the next two men’s World Cups.

The 2030 World Cup will be co-host­ed by Spain, Por­tu­gal and Mo­roc­co.

This year, host cities, sta­dia and FI­FA (the world gov­ern­ing body for soc­cer), are work­ing to pro­tect play­ers and spec­ta­tors by con­duct­ing heat risk as­sess­ments, en­hanc­ing shade, cool­ing zones and wa­ter ac­cess, sta­tion­ing med­ical teams dur­ing events and more.

Some plans are still be­ing fi­nal­ized, but here’s a look at what to ex­pect in­side sta­di­ums and at out­door events:

Pro­tect­ing ath­letes and FI­FA per­son­nel

Play­ers will get 3-minute hy­dra­tion breaks mid­way through each half, re­gard­less of weath­er con­di­tions, FI­FA said. Oth­er wel­fare plans in­clude al­low­ing teams the usu­al of up to five sub­sti­tu­tions, a min­i­mum of three rest days be­tween match­es, and staff and sub­sti­tutes will have ac­cess to cli­mate-con­trolled bench­es at out­door match­es. Cli­mate con­di­tions are fac­tored in­to the match sched­ule.

“Out­door match­es dur­ing the hottest parts of the day have been strate­gi­cal­ly lim­it­ed, kick-off times ad­just­ed in cer­tain mar­kets, and match­es ex­pect­ed in warmer win­dows pri­or­i­tized for cov­ered sta­di­ums where pos­si­ble,” FI­FA said.

The fed­er­a­tion has al­so cre­at­ed a Heat Ill­ness Mit­i­ga­tion and Man­age­ment Task Force made of med­ical and op­er­a­tional ex­perts. Ahead of the games, they are fi­nal­iz­ing heat-risk alert sys­tems, co­or­di­nat­ing sta­di­um med­ical ac­tion plans and oth­er stan­dard­ized guid­ance.

Heat mes­sag­ing, ac­ti­vat­ing ex­treme heat plans and med­ical per­son­nel

Of­fi­cials will be mon­i­tor­ing weath­er con­di­tions and be pre­pared to ac­ti­vate ex­treme heat plans if they de­ter­mine that tem­per­a­tures are too hot. If ac­ti­vat­ed, plans will in­clude send­ing out pub­lic safe­ty mes­sag­ing on how to pro­tect your­self from heat and how to rec­og­nize signs of heat ex­haus­tion and stroke.

If Cana­da’s fed­er­al agency, En­vi­ron­ment and Cli­mate Change Cana­da, is­sues an of­fi­cial heat warn­ing, for in­stance, the city of Van­cou­ver will add more tem­po­rary drink­ing foun­tains, hand­wash­ing and mist­ing sta­tions out­side to com­ple­ment its mul­ti­lan­guage heat aware­ness cam­paign.

Along main tour­na­ment and fes­ti­val routes, vol­un­teers will al­so be pro­vid­ing heat safe­ty in­for­ma­tion to at­ten­dees and work­ers.

The Los An­ge­les Coun­ty De­part­ment of Pub­lic Health said it will be dis­sem­i­nat­ing heat safe­ty and prop­er hy­dra­tion in­for­ma­tion lead­ing up to and dur­ing the games. It will al­so be launch­ing a heat dash­board for the pub­lic with near-re­al-time da­ta on heat-re­lat­ed emer­gency room vis­its in the coun­ty.

New York City will be pre­pared to send out no­ti­fi­ca­tions in 14 dif­fer­ent lan­guages to its 1.5 mil­lion pub­lic warn­ing sub­scribers, as well as in­ter­na­tion­al vis­i­tors on the Ever­bridge app and What­sApp chan­nels.

Ed­u­ca­tion­al cam­paigns are help­ful for pro­mot­ing hy­dra­tion, use of shade and more, but re­search shows pas­sive­ly dis­sem­i­nat­ing in­for­ma­tion doesn’t al­ways have the in­tend­ed ef­fect, said William Adams, as­sis­tant pro­fes­sor in ki­ne­si­ol­o­gy at Michi­gan State Uni­ver­si­ty who re­search­es ex­er­tion­al heat stress among ath­letes. It re­quires a more ac­tive ap­proach, but that isn’t re­al­ly fea­si­ble with large events like this one, he said.

Med­ical per­son­nel will al­so be sta­tioned and avail­able in FI­FA Fan Fes­ti­vals and around sev­er­al sta­di­ums dur­ing match­es to man­age heat-re­lat­ed ill­ness­es, in­clud­ing at the Toron­to Sta­di­um in Cana­da and the Dal­las Sta­di­um in Texas.

At Dal­las’ out­door events, all med­ical pro­fes­sion­als will have ac­cess to ice and ice im­mer­sion bags, and the city’s fes­ti­val site — where peo­ple can watch live match­es — will al­so have two med­ical sta­tions in cli­mate-con­trolled lo­ca­tions.

In­creased ac­cess to shade, wa­ter and cool­ing sta­tions

Cities and sta­dia will be in­creas­ing ac­cess to shade, cool­ing ar­eas and wa­ter for spec­ta­tors and work­ers.

In ad­di­tion to be­ing ready to im­ple­ment its heat and smoke re­sponse plans if nec­es­sary, the Seat­tle Of­fice of Emer­gency Man­age­ment in Wash­ing­ton State is ex­plor­ing us­ing air-con­di­tioned bus­es, tents and wa­ter mis­ters at fan fests and match­es.

In Van­cou­ver, there will be shad­ed seat­ing ar­eas at all the var­i­ous tour­na­ment events and lo­ca­tions around the city.

Vol­un­teers and work­ers at out­side events in Dal­las will have man­dat­ed rest and hy­dra­tion breaks. And of­fi­cials will be work­ing with vol­un­teer or­ga­ni­za­tions to hand out wa­ter.

These com­bined ef­forts hope to re­duce heat‑re­lat­ed ill­ness­es and help min­i­mize strain on lo­cal hos­pi­tals dur­ing the tour­na­ment.

Sta­di­um cov­er­age and cool­er hours

Some sta­di­ums are cov­ered, such as Cana­da’s BC Place Van­cou­ver sta­di­um that will host sev­en games. It is “one of on­ly four 2026 World Cup sta­di­ums which are ful­ly cov­ered so play­ers and fans will not be ex­posed to weath­er con­di­tions while in­side the sta­di­um,” the City of Van­cou­ver said in a state­ment.

The Dal­las venue has air con­di­tion­ing and is al­so en­closed, “so we don’t an­tic­i­pate any weath­er-re­lat­ed is­sues in­side,” said Tim Ci­esco with the Ar­ling­ton Po­lice De­part­ment.

In San­ta Clara, Cal­i­for­nia, all match­es will be played in the evening, when weath­er con­di­tions are cool­er.

El­liot Arthur-Wor­sop, found­ing di­rec­tor For Foot­ball for Fu­ture, a group fo­cused on cre­at­ing en­vi­ron­men­tal sus­tain­abil­i­ty in soc­cer, said the tour­na­ment’s or­ga­niz­ers have a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to keep peo­ple safe. “That’s a so­cial con­tract that ex­ists be­tween the fans and foot­ball gov­ern­ing bod­ies,” he said. In a cli­mate re­port they pub­lished ahead of this year’s games, they found heat and oth­er cli­mate risks will in­ten­si­fy in most sta­di­ums host­ing games in 2050.

“By the next time the World Cup comes back and is award­ed in this part of the world,” he said, “it will have to be struc­tured dif­fer­ent­ly and adapt­ed.” —LOS AN­GE­LES (AP)

_________

Sto­ry by DO­RANY PINE­DA | As­so­ci­at­ed Press

As­so­ci­at­ed Press writ­ers Gra­ham Dun­bar and Seth Boren­stein con­tributed to this re­port.