MyWorldCupTime

Über MyWorldCupTime

Last updated: May 9, 2026

What is MyWorldCupTime?

MyWorldCupTime is an independent editorial publication covering the 2026 FIFA World Cup. The site exists to solve a problem the official tournament site doesn't: figuring out when you can actually watch matches, given that the 2026 tournament spreads 104 games across 16 host cities, 3 countries, and 4 timezones from Pacific to Atlantic.

Every kickoff on the site is converted to your local timezone automatically. Each match is then assigned a watchability colour based on the hours you have available: green if the match fits the day, amber if it's tight, red if it falls during work or sleep, blue if it kicks off in the small hours. You can customise your available hours and follow specific teams through the group stage and into the knockouts.

Beyond the schedule, MyWorldCupTime publishes editorial coverage of the tournament itself: a Tournament Outlook on the contenders and dark horses, a Watchability Report on which fixtures are likely to deliver the most compelling football, and a series of campaigns covering the ticket pricing controversy that has shaped fan access to this tournament.

Why this site exists

I was born in the Netherlands and caught the World Cup bug in 1994. Gheorghe Hagi against Colombia, that absurd goal from the halfway line: something rewired in my brain and never reset. I remember getting up at unholy hours as a kid to watch Oranje versus Saudi Arabia, half-asleep, completely electric. What stayed with me wasn't only the football. It was the strange parade of cultures the World Cup hauls into one room every four years. Romania-Argentina in the round of 16, Hagi pulling the strings, was one of the great matches of my life. Then Roberto Baggio, alone in the centre circle, ballooning that penalty over the bar in the Pasadena heat. The whole game has everything: tactics, tragedy, theatre.

The Netherlands had a real shot in 1998, but Zidane's star burned brightest of anyone's that summer (and yes, we should have had a penalty against Brazil in regulation). Then came our own long penalty-shootout heartbreak. I've moved across continents since, lived in different time zones, and the World Cup has stayed the metronome of my life. I can place almost any year by which tournament was on. (Where was I in summer 2010? I had just moved from Berlin to Amsterdam, and I watched the final from there as Iniesta's goal broke another generation of Dutch fans.)

For 2026 I live less than eight hours' drive from the host city of the final (New York / New Jersey). I will not be paying the official ticket prices, so I'll be watching on TV like everyone else, fitting matches around real life. Doing that across four host-country timezones is genuinely difficult. So MyWorldCupTime exists to make it easier — and, while we're at it, to publish honest editorial coverage of a tournament that the official channels are reluctant to cover honestly.

Methodology — how the colours are calculated

Every match has an official kickoff time published in venue-local time. The site converts that to UTC, then to your browser's detected timezone (overridable via the timezone selector in the header). The colour assigned to each match comes from a deterministic algorithm that compares the local kickoff hour and the match end (kickoff + 2 hours) to your declared "watch windows":

Default windows are 06:00 to 08:00 morning, 17:00 to 23:59 evening, with weekends free all day. Adjust them via the Set Your Hours button in the header. Your settings are stored locally in your browser, never on a server.

Sources and verification

The full schedule is re-verified weekly against official FIFA sources during the buildup, and daily during the tournament. The most recent verification date is shown in the site footer. See Editorial Standards for the full sourcing and verification policy.

What MyWorldCupTime is not

This is not an official resource. MyWorldCupTime is not affiliated with FIFA, the United States Soccer Federation, the Canadian Soccer Association, the Mexican Football Federation, or any broadcaster. The site accepts no commercial support from tournament organizers, sponsors, or governing bodies. There are no paid affiliate links and no betting partnerships. The only revenue is Google AdSense banner ads, and AdSense placement is automated — it has no influence on what we cover or how.

Privacy and data

No accounts. No email signup. No tracking pixels of our own. Your timezone preference and watch windows live in localStorage in your browser; they are never transmitted to a server. Google Analytics (via Tag Manager) collects anonymous, aggregated traffic counts; AdSense may set its own cookies for ad personalisation per Google's ads policy. See the privacy page for the full disclosure.

Languages

MyWorldCupTime is published in English, Français, Español, العربية, 日本語, Português, 한국어, Deutsch. Team narratives and editorial copy are hand-written per locale.

Contact

Editorial enquiries, corrections, and press: info@myworldcuptime.com. Every message is read. The site is updated continuously through the tournament: if you bookmark it now, the kickoff times you see in June will reflect any last-minute schedule moves. For the corrections log, see Corrections; for the full editorial standards, see Editorial Standards.