World Cup

For followers of the 'Beautiful Game', here's a special offering to help you keep up with this year's  World Cup for the next month  (while the rest of us are busy trying to find something else to watch on the telly. ....only kidding !)

The widget below this box is frequently updated with the latest results and will allow you to keep track of your team's progress through the group and knockout stages of the FIFA 2026 tournament. You can also see the schedule of matches/venues in FIFA's official fixtures list for the tournament, and download the .pdf if you wish. (Hint  - for the best view, open the .pdf in a new window and use the magnifiers).

The FIFA-sponsored tournament this year is in an expanded format with 48 teams taking part in all. 

12 groups of 4 teams each will play in an initial group stage, with each team playing  matches against the other 3 teams in the group.  The top 2 teams from each group, and the 8 best 3rd placed teams will then proceed to the knockout stage. 

This stage starts with the 'Round of 32', proceeding to 16, 8 (Quarter finals), 4 (Semi Finals) and 2 (Final). An additional match between the two losing teams in the semi finals will be played to determine the 3rd place in the competition. 

I'd encourage any reader wanting more detail than I can provide on how it all works to look at the excellent wiki article on the tournament.

By way of a bit of extra entertainment, readers might like to look at a recent article to see how things might develop in the US....

Enjoy.....