Tuesday's Wc schedule at the 2026 World Cup packs three round of 32 games into one day, with Ivory Coast and Norway opening the slate in Dallas before Sweden meets France and Mexico hosts Ecuador. The knockout stage is moving fast, and Antonio Nusa is one of the names to watch because Norway will need his supply line for Erling Haaland.
That first match carries extra weight because Norway comes in as the favorite, yet Ivory Coast has allowed only two goals in the group stage and beat France in Nantes earlier this month. Norway also arrives with a rough edge of its own: it has conceded in every group match and has not kept a clean sheet in five games, even after finishing the group stage with wins over Iraq and Senegal.
The kickoff times are what many readers are searching for, and the day is set in sequence: Norway plays Ivory Coast in Dallas, Sweden plays France at New York New Jersey Stadium, and Mexico hosts Ecuador in Mexico City. Whoever wins goes through to the round of 16, which is the immediate prize in a single-elimination stage where one bad night sends a team home.
France enters with Kylian Mbappé, Ousmane Dembélé and Michael Olise leading the attack, and it has scored at least three goals in each of its three group stage games. That makes Sweden the team trying to slow the hottest offense on the board, while Mexico brings a different kind of pressure after yet to concede at the tournament. The three matches turn Tuesday into a condensed test of form, depth and nerve, with the bracket ready to shift by the end of the night.
Norway's case is the most revealing one. Martin Ødegaard, Antonio Nusa and Erling Haaland all return for the matchup with Ivory Coast after Norway's rotated loss to France, and Nusa's role matters because he is one of the main scoring creators for Haaland. If Norway gets the balance right, it should move on; if Ivory Coast repeats the control it showed against Germany and Ecuador in the group stage, the favorite could be forced to leave Tuesday with more questions than answers.
By the end of the day, three teams will move into the round of 16 and three others will be done. That is the blunt math of the Wc schedule, and it is why Tuesday feels bigger than a normal knockout date: one full day, three matches, and a short path from promise to elimination.
