How the 104-Match Schedule Was Built
The 2026 tournament was the largest in the competition's history, and the match count tells the story: 104 games, against 64 in every edition from 1998 to 2022. The group stage accounted for 72 of them — twelve groups of four, each side playing three matches — with the remaining 32 spread across five knockout rounds and the third-place play-off.
That expansion changed the shape of a deep run. A team reaching the final played eight matches rather than seven, because the round of 32 added a knockout round that did not previously exist. Across a tournament staged in high summer over three countries and multiple time zones, that extra fixture — and the travel attached to it — made squad depth and rotation a more decisive factor than in any previous World Cup.
How Knockout Ties Were Decided
Group matches could end level and often did. From the round of 32 onwards, a winner was required on the day. A tie level after 90 minutes went to 30 minutes of extra time, played in two halves of 15, and if the scores were still level, to a penalty shootout.
Scores on this page are shown as they finished. Where a match went beyond normal time, the result is marked AET (after extra time) or PSO (penalty shootout) — a distinction worth keeping, because a shootout is recorded as a draw in most statistical records even though it eliminated one of the two teams.
Where the Data Comes From
Results are drawn from open football data providers, principally the openfootball project, with TheSportsDB as a secondary source. Where the two disagree on a scoreline we take the one that can be corroborated; where neither is reachable, the page says the data is unavailable rather than displaying a placeholder.