So after incredible scenes yesterday, the 2026 FIFA World Cup is now fully set, and with 48 nations heading to the United States, Canada and Mexico, this is not only football’s biggest stage, it is also one of the biggest tourism showcases on the planet. For some teams, the story is pure football pedigree. For others, it is also about destination power, visitor scale, global recognition and the chance to turn tournament visibility into future demand. France remains the world’s most visited destination on the latest comparable figures, with 102 million international tourists in 2024, ahead of Spain on 93.8 million and the United States on 72.4 million, while Turkey, Mexico, Germany and Japan all arrive with huge tourism weight of their own. Sport and tourism are now so tightly bound together, from airlines sponsoring stadiums to destinations sponsoring shirts, that the two are increasingly inseparable. So with that in mind, Breaking Travel News’ football fanatic Editor in Chief Justin “You’ll Never Walk Alone” Cooke has taken huge liberty and attempted to fuse football with tourism data to create his own ranking for who comes out on top at the 2026 FIFA World Cup.
