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The 2026 World Cup is over, and the millions of people who enjoyed it now find themselves presented with a yawning chasm this weekend. In the UK alone, ITV and the BBC broadcast approximately 275 hours of live coverage over the duration of the tournament, and something that colossal will be hard to replace.
But fear not. Just because the football is over, we are still brimming with things similarly designed to take our minds off the screaming hellpit that is the world around us. Here’s a guide, hope it helps.
If you miss sport
The good news is that, while the World Cup is over, the Commonwealth Games have just begun in Glasgow with a wealth of sports to watch, including swimming, netball, boxing, gymnastics and bowls. The bad news, however, is that all of this will be crammed into a single hour of joyless highlights on Channel 5 at 10.30pm, because TNT bought the rights and you need a subscription to watch it.
The same goes for the Tour de France, now that ITV’s 24 years of coverage has ended.
If it’s normal, old-fashioned, free-to-air televised sport you’re after, you’ll have a harder time getting your fill. There’s a rugby league match on BBC Two this afternoon, and some cricket tomorrow, but other than that your best hope is to put ITV4 on today and just let its trickle of low-level sport wash over you. Highlights of Man Utd v Nottingham Forest from December 1979 at 6.20am. World rally highlights at 7.20am. Racing at Ascot at 9.30am. Then Formula E. To top it off, Sean Bean in Sharpe this afternoon and Tom Cruise, who gave the opening speech at the World Cup final, is back again in Top Gun at 10.05pm.
That’s basically the same as the World Cup, isn’t it? Isn’t it?
If you miss feeling part of something big
You should really go and watch The Odyssey. Christopher Nolan’s epic film is breaking box office records left and right, with tickets in his preferred format (70mm Imax) genuinely hard to come by.
And, quite honestly, it isn’t so different from the World Cup. It is loud and long and exciting. It offers no end of topics to get mock-angry about (where were the Phaeacians? What happened to all the sex? What was Nolan thinking, infusing Judeo-Christian themes of guilt into an ancient poem whose climactic solution is an orgy of violent vengeance?).
Also, it is essentially the story of a man who, in the cold light of day, looks back at a period of intense tribalism with a sense of newfound regret, and if that isn’t the post-World Cup mood writ large, I don’t know what is.
If you miss staying up late
Perhaps you have simply grown accustomed in the UK to staying on American time, and that habit is proving hard to shift. If that’s the case, then you have some options to prolong your new nocturnal hours. If you’re a Netflix subscriber, then WWE SummerSlam starts at 11pm BST on 1 August and will run for several hours. Also, the San Diego Comic-Con starts tonight, and runs on California time, providing you with the chance to stay up all night refreshing social media in the hope that you get to see a cool new trailer in real time.
Alternatively, the Delta Aquariid meteor shower is likely to peak on the night of 30 July. It isn’t guaranteed that you’ll see it from the UK, but it’s that or going to bed like a loser.
If you miss hydration breaks
Go and drink something. Urinary tract infections are no fun, especially at this time of year. And watch an advert while you’re at it, just for the full FIFA effect.
If you miss all the speculation
Most of the fun of the World Cup is all the second-guessing and conjecture that goes with it. Luckily, British political life is especially ripe for this exact thing at the moment. We have (another) new prime minister, providing us with endless potential for amateur punditry. Is Angela Rayner being played out of position? Has Ed Miliband still got the legs for international diplomacy? How many disappointing performances will it take before the country begins demanding yet another change of manager?
Even better, the Clacton byelection is coming up, which is a great opportunity to get an office sweepstake going. Which of the 34 candidates will you draw? Binface? Farage? Baron Von Thunderclap? Abi Hookway from Channel 5’s Rich House Poor House? Woke Trump Carrzee? Laurence Fox? What excitement.
This is the best news of all. It was reported this week that Donald Trump wants America to host the 2038 World Cup. He would be in his fifth term as president by then, too. Joy upon joy.
