The 2026 FIFA World Cup build-up began in earnest this week, and the Herald has put Nick Ralston and Vince Rugari on the ground in North America while Emma Kemp, Frances Howe and Billie Eder cover the tournament from Herald HQ. The visual stories team has already produced an interactive predictor, and the paper’s AI model has run the tournament 100,000 times before a ball has been kicked.

Ralston was in Vancouver with Rugari as the first signs of the tournament surfaced around the city. Finishing touches were still being put on the fan zones right up to kick-off today, but he said the World Cup had already come alive overnight. Mexican jerseys were everywhere downtown, and Granville Street had been turned into five blocks of activity with bars, big screens and soccer-related art installations.

That early surge matters because the people following the Socceroos are already paying heavily for the chance to do it. Australian fans in Vancouver were helping fill the bars along the strip, and some expected three weeks following the team around the north-west to cost as much as $15,000. Others had already paid more than $1000 for the Australia v US match in Seattle alone. For a tournament that can pull fans into early-morning alarm clocks and green-and-gold shirts, the demand is real before the first group-stage match has even settled into view.

There is still a familiar problem beneath the excitement. Soccer is hugely popular at grassroots level in Australia, but that support has never translated cleanly into a strong national competition or stable governance. The sport can fill junior fields and, on nights like this, pull Australians across a continent, yet it still struggles to turn that passion into the kind of everyday hold other codes enjoy at home.

Ralston said the United States was not paying much attention during the week, with the NHL finals on in Canada and the NBA playoffs featuring the New York Knicks dominating headlines south of the border. That makes the next stop telling: Canada will play its first match in Toronto tomorrow, and the opening days should show whether the tournament can hold attention beyond the fan zones, the bars and the early wave of Australians already spending heavily to be there.