World Cup 2026 Trivia: 25 Facts and a Quiz

The World Cup finished on 19 July 2026 and the football calendar has barely had time to breathe, so it is a good time to check what you actually remember. This page is a list of things that happened, not things that people say happened. Each one was checked against more than one source, and the scores are the ones on the official record.

Skip to the quiz at the bottom if you want to test yourself first. The answers are in the table, so cover it up.

The final

• Spain beat Argentina 1-0 after extra time at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey on 19 July 2026. Ferran Torres scored the only goal in the 106th minute.
• Argentina played the last stretch with ten men. Enzo Fernández was sent off in the 84th minute, for a second yellow card, after a foul on Pau Cubarsí.
• It was Spain's second World Cup, after 2010, and Argentina had won the previous one in Qatar in 2022.
• Lionel Messi did not score in the final. He finished the tournament with eight goals and four assists in seven games.

The awards

• Kylian Mbappé won the Golden Boot with 10 goals. He is the first player to win it at two World Cups, after also winning it in 2022.
• Messi finished second on eight goals. Erling Haaland and Jude Bellingham each scored seven.
• Spain's Rodri won the Golden Ball, and his team-mates Unai Simón and Pau Cubarsí won the Golden Glove and the Young Player award. Messi took the Silver Ball and Mbappé the Bronze Ball.

Third place: the ten-goal game

England beat France 6-4 in the third-place match in Miami Gardens on 18 July, and it had ten goals.

• England led 4-0 at half-time through Declan Rice, Ezri Konsa and a double from Bukayo Saka. France came back with goals from Mbappé (twice), Bradley Barcola and Ousmane Dembélé.
• Saka finished with a hat-trick, including a penalty in the 87th minute. He became the fourth Englishman to score a hat-trick at a World Cup, after Geoff Hurst in 1966, Gary Lineker in 1986 and Harry Kane in 2018.
• Bellingham scored the tenth goal of the game in stoppage time. England had lost the semi-final 2-1 to Argentina, and France had lost theirs 2-0 to Spain.
• The top four teams in the FIFA rankings before the tournament, Spain, Argentina, France and England, all reached the semi-finals. It is the first time that has happened since the rankings began in 1992.

How the big names went out

All three co-hosts, the USA, Mexico and Canada, went out in the round of 16. Colombia became the only team in the tournament to play matches in all three host countries, and Switzerland reached their first quarter-final in 72 years.

Brazil, Norway and the unbeaten record

• Brazil's round-of-16 exit was their earliest at a World Cup since 1990. Bruno Guimarães missed a first-half penalty before Haaland scored twice.
• Brazil have never beaten Norway in five meetings. Norway have three wins and there are two draws, and the 1998 World Cup group game (2-1 to Norway) was one of the wins.
• Neymar retired from international football after the game as Brazil's all-time top scorer with 80 goals in 130 appearances. Only Cafu, with 142 caps, has played more times for Brazil.

Numbers and oddities

• The tournament had 48 teams and 104 matches, spread over 39 days, and included a round of 32 for the first time. Mexico became the first country to host a World Cup three times.
• Attendance was close to seven million, a record for a World Cup and more than the 1994 tournament in the United States.
• Panama lost all three group games, 1-0 to Ghana, 1-0 to Croatia and 2-0 to England, and did not score a goal. They play India on 25 September.
• England opened their tournament with a 4-2 win over Croatia on 17 June. Harry Kane scored twice, and Luka Modrić was playing at his fifth World Cup.
• England's match at the Azteca was their first there since the 1986 game in which Diego Maradona scored the Hand of God goal.
• Paraguay knocked Germany out on penalties, then lost 1-0 to France in the round of 16 in heat of up to 38 degrees Celsius.

What happened next

The window that follows the World Cup is full of new starts. Klopp is in charge of Germany, Zidane of France, Jorge Jesus of Portugal and Diego Forlán of Uruguay on an interim basis. Neymar has retired from Brazil and Messi has announced that he is retiring from Argentina.

The 10-question quiz

Cover the right-hand column and answer before you look.

Seven or more is a decent score. If you want a proper fight, the free Football Quiz on FootballDream is live multiplayer, so you can play it against friends and it has a World Cup 2026 topic.