For the football-loving traveller, planning a trip to catch a major tournament can be the ultimate thrill. The dream of sitting in a stadium in a foreign country, watching your team run out onto the pitch, is a very common one.
However, putting the plans in place to actually reach that position is far more complex in practice.
With the 2026 World Cup coming up this summer across the USA, Canada, and Mexico, it’s more likely than not that, at this late stage, getting to it will be difficult and expensive, with the demand for hotel rooms and tickets skyrocketing as the big kickoff nears.
This raises the fascinating question of when is the right time to plan a trip to a football tournament?
The final stretch
The closer a tournament gets, the greater the interest in it. Fans feel more desperate to travel to games to be a part of it all, just like bettors will turn their attention to bookmakers for last-minute predictions of who will win the World Cup or who will finish as the top goalscorer.
Late action at the bookies will still allow you to pick and choose your World Cup bonuses, as they are abundant. But while it’s still easy to open a bookmaker account on the eve of a tournament like the Euros or the World Cup, planning a trip at that stage is going to be a lot more difficult.
A rule of thumb
Plans to travel for an international football tournament, whether that’s the World Cup or the Copa America, should happen at least 12 months in advance.
But why so early? Host countries for tournaments are selected by officials years in advance of the actual start date, so there’s plenty of time to start planning for a big trip.
While the general dates of tournaments are announced early, for many people, the only way to be certain of catching their specific team in action is to wait until the actual fixtures are released, which may not be until just a few months ahead of the event. But leaving it that late can close a lot of doors for travel.
Where to go
Hub cities, like New York and Los Angeles, which are hosting games at the 2026 World Cup, are naturally going to the kind of expensive locations where demand will outstrip supply very quickly.
Therefore, be prepared to explore less-prime destinations, as it could make getting there easier.
It’s also important to recognise that for such a major tournament, hotels don’t have any incentive to lower their prices because there will always be travelling fans who are happy to pay premium prices.
So it’s beating that demand for accommodation, which is the big issue, and it’s easier to solve by getting in early. As a side note, when booking a hotel, always look for options that are fully refundable.
Catching the right flight
Airlines typically release their itineraries around 11 months in advance. It’s crucial to get these as early as possible, not only to save on cost, but also to get the most direct routes possible.
Options will become much more limited down the line, and may involve inconvenient stopovers. Tour operators will also be snapping up a lot of the best tickets, so flights are an area of travel that’s not worth hesitating over.
Travel first, tickets later
It’s often a case of getting plane tickets and hotels sorted before match tickets are even released. This may sound counterintuitive, but tickets to matches are the hardest part of the equation.
There’s no guarantee of getting any, due to things like FIFA’s lottery system and a big first-come, first-served scramble when fixtures are announced. If that fails, you are left looking for higher-priced resale ones.
But all is not lost; if you have already booked travel and accommodation, you can always hop along to fan-zone experiences to soak up the atmosphere, if you don’t have match tickets.
More importantly, as long as you have a base camp in a host city, you can then book other local travel, like trains and internal flights, to get to see any matches at a later date.
Visa processing
Travelling abroad to watch a football tournament brings another aspect of timing into the picture: visas. Allow plenty of time to get your travel documents in order, something that should be done 4 to 6 months in advance.
The 2026 World Cup provides a good example of this, because if you wanted to go to the USA, Canada, and Mexico, for example, that’s triple the paperwork.
Don’t wait around
In April 2026, FIFA put out ticket prices under a “Last Minute Sales” tag. Any lucky people getting those tickets with only around two months to go until the tournament would likely be facing triple the cost for flights and accommodation than if they were booked a year in advance.
Travelling for football tournaments is nothing like a standard holiday, where you can get last-minute bargains. The demand to watch major international football matches at events like the Euros and World Cup is phenomenal and often more expensive than your regular type of travel.
Crossing the t’s and dotting the i’s well in advance can alleviate some of the stress.
By Tatyana Khardina
Advertising feature with Legal Bet
