and ITV will not run a dedicated daily highlights show for World Cup 2026, leaving UK viewers to turn to online and social platforms for the best clips from all 104 matches. The tournament, held in Canada, Mexico and the United States, will still be widely covered, but not in the familiar nightly TV format many fans may expect.
That matters now because many games are expected to kick off after midnight for viewers in the UK, making catch-up viewing the default rather than the exception. For fans searching for World Cup highlights, the route will run through iPlayer, the Sport website, the Football YouTube channel, TikTok, ITVX, the ITV YouTube channel, social media, and FIFA's own channels, with the coverage spread across platforms instead of gathered into one nightly programme.
Sport will make match highlights of every game available on iPlayer, its website, its Football YouTube channel and TikTok, while bite-sized clips will also appear on the Shorts video tab in the Sport app. ITV will carry highlights of all 104 games on ITVX, its YouTube channel and social media channels, and fans can also watch on the FIFA website and FIFA YouTube channel. FIFA's packages are usually short, around 2 minutes long, which makes them useful for a quick catch-up but not a full substitute for a highlights show built around a television schedule.
The absence of a daily or ITV highlights programme is the clear break with recent tournaments, when most fixtures were played in the day or early evening and a single TV roundup felt easier to sustain. World Cup 2026 will be different for UK audiences because of the time difference, and the viewing habit will shift with it: fans who want to keep up will have to follow the clips where they appear, not wait for one fixed broadcast slot.
That leaves one practical gap, and it is the one viewers will feel during the tournament itself. The broad promise is clear — every match will have highlights somewhere — but the specific timing of each package has not been set out, so UK fans will have to check the platforms repeatedly if they do not want to miss the quickest turnaround on the games that finish after midnight.
