The 2026 World Cup opened in Mexico City on 11 June and closed at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey on 19 July. This is a record of the first tournament played with 48 nations and 104 matches.
This article contains results — scorelines and scorers. If you are still working through recordings, use the spoiler-free World Cup archive instead: line-ups, formations and squads with no scores anywhere. The complete results list lives here.
The tournament in numbers
| Matches | 104 |
| Goals | 308 |
| Goals per match | 2.96 |
| Nations | 48 |
| Hosts | USA, Canada, Mexico |
The match count grew by 1.6× from the 64 played by 32 nations in 2022. At 2.96 goals per match, the expanded field did not produce the lopsided scorelines many expected from adding sixteen more teams.
The final — Spain win it in extra time
Spain met Argentina in the final. Nothing separated them across ninety minutes; the tie was settled in the 106th minute, early in the second period of extra time, by Ferran Torres. Spain 1-0 Argentina (a.e.t.)
Spain arrived via a 2-0 win over France in the semi-finals, Argentina by beating England 2-1. The third-place play-off between France and England turned into the most open match of the closing week: France 4-6 England.
How the knockout rounds unfolded
| Round | Results |
|---|---|
| Semi-finals | France 0-2 Spain / England 1-2 Argentina |
| Quarter-finals | France 2-0 Morocco / Spain 2-1 Belgium / Norway 1-2 England (a.e.t.) / Argentina 3-1 Switzerland (a.e.t.) |
| Round of 16 | Canada 0-3 Morocco / Paraguay 0-1 France / Brazil 1-2 Norway / Mexico 2-3 England / Portugal 0-1 Spain / USA 1-4 Belgium / Argentina 3-2 Egypt / Switzerland 0-0 Colombia (pens 4-3) |
The result that reshaped the bracket was Brazil 1-2 Norway in the round of 16: Erling Haaland’s Norway went through and then took England to extra time in the quarter-finals. The new round of 32 had already claimed two more big names — the Netherlands lost to Morocco on penalties (1-1, pens 2-3) and Germany went out to Paraguay the same way (1-1, pens 3-4). Adding a knockout round before the round of 16 meant elite teams faced elimination football a week earlier than they used to.
Leading scorers
| Goals | Player |
|---|---|
| 10 | Kylian Mbappé |
| 8 | Lionel Messi |
| 7 | Jude Bellingham |
| 7 | Erling Haaland |
| 6 | Ousmane Dembélé |
| 6 | Harry Kane |
| 5 | Mikel Oyarzabal |
Mbappé finished as the tournament’s top scorer with ten, across the eight matches France played before losing both the semi-final and the third-place match. Messi, at 39, scored eight and carried Argentina to the final.
Japan — through Group F, out in the round of 32
Japan drew twice and won once in the group stage, enough to come out of Group F.
| Match | Result |
|---|---|
| Matchday 1 | Netherlands 2-2 Japan |
| Matchday 2 | Tunisia 0-4 Japan |
| Matchday 3 | Japan 1-1 Sweden |
| Round of 32 | Brazil 2-1 Japan |
Against the Netherlands, Japan twice came from behind: Virgil van Dijk scored on 51 minutes, Keito Nakamura equalised on 57, Crysencio Summerville put the Dutch back in front on 64, and Daichi Kamada levelled it on 88. The Tunisia match was their most complete: Kamada (4’), Ayase Ueda (31’ and 83’) and Junya Ito (69’) for 4-0.
The round of 32 was the hard one. Kaishu Sano put Japan ahead on 29 minutes, Casemiro equalised on 56, and the tie was decided by Gabriel Martinelli five minutes into stoppage time. Japan led one of the favourites for most of the match and lost it at the end.
Did the new format work?
With 48 nations in twelve groups, the top two from each group plus the eight best third-placed teams advance. The design goal was to keep final-round group matches meaningful, and it largely worked: qualification lines were still moving in most groups on matchday three.
The cost is length. Winning the tournament now takes eight matches rather than seven, the competition ran for 39 days, and it was spread across three North American countries with long travel legs between venues. Squad management mattered more than in any recent World Cup.
Every scoreline and scorer is on the results page; line-ups, formations and match previews are in the World Cup archive. The 26-player squads for all 48 nations remain online.