Is it too late to plan your FIFA World Cup campaign?

It’s almost time once again for the greatest show on earth: The FIFA World Cup 2026.

With just a few days to go until kick off in Mexico City, it’s still not too late for your brand to capitalise on the upcoming festival of football.

This will be the biggest World Cup in history. A new format increases the number of participating teams from 32 to 48, adding 40 more matches and extending the tournament by almost two weeks.

This presents a massive opportunity to make your brand part of the conversation and build your reputation, even if you don’t have a campaign locked in yet.

A historic opportunity for the MENA region

The good news for brands in the region is the unprecedented local interest. A record number of teams from this part of the world have qualified, including nine from the Middle East and North Africa: Algeria, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Morocco, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Tunisia.

This guarantees a huge, highly engaged audience across the Arabic-speaking world. When you add expats and casual sports fans who catch World Cup fever every four years, a significant portion of the MENA population will be captivated for the full 39 days of the tournament.

Capitalising on viewing habits

• Prime-time viewing:The majority of kick-off times throughout the tournament will fall in the evening and very early morning here in MENA.. Football is a core part of the region’s bustling after-dark culture, whether at home, in a majlis, or at a café. This alignment with peak social hours is another win for your brand.
• Social first: Post the last World Cup in 2022, YouGov reported that more people in the UAE now consume sport via social media than live TV broadcasts. Social-first viewing hasn’t just entered the mix, it’s taken over. Your audience for the World Cup is guaranteed to be online, you just need to identify where they engage.

The power of reactive

If your plans aren’t already in place, you may feel late to the party. But some of the most memorable World Cup marketing moments were not pre-planned; they were born from brands reacting in real-time to the drama on and off the pitch.

This can be as simple as a clever social media post, like Snickers’ response to another Luis Suárez biting incident, or a major pivot, like Budweiser’s “Bring the Bud Home” campaign during the last World Cup. The beer brand, a FIFA partner, had to react overnight to last-minute restrictions from the host nation that limiting the sale of its product.

The response was an award-winning campaign that promised the unsold beer to fans of the winning nation, resulting in Budweiser achieving almost 50% of all sponsor mentions throughout the tournament.

The lesson is simple: major sporting events create shared cultural moments. Brands prepared to react quickly can earn attention that far outweighs their media budget. With 104 matches over 39 days, there will be no shortage of opportunities.

Finding your place in the conversation

Success in sports marketing lies in finding the sweet spot where your brand, the fans, and the event intersect.

• Your brand: Your brand doesn’t need to have a natural affinity with football, but it does need an authentic one. That might mean adapting your mission to the world of football for the first time, letting your product become the star or finding the unexpected angle that only your brand could own. Specsavers, a British optometry brand, didn’t force a football connection, they found one hiding in plain sight: a cheeky campaign questioning the eyesight of match officials that only an optometry brand could pull off.  As such they have become part of football culture with the enduring line “Should’ve gone to Specsavers.”
• The fans: When it comes to fans, at this late stage focus on where the fans you want to speak to live and breathe online during the tournament. For example, want to speak to young Saudis? With more than 90% of Saudis aged 13–34 actively using Snapchat, the platform is one of the most powerful channels for reaching the Kingdom’s young football audience. Find your fans, wherever they are and engage them on their channels.
• The event: From an event perspective, lean into a World Cup of potential firsts for the region; Jordan making their World Cup debut, Egypt looking for their first ever win tournament win, a record nine teams from the region competing for the first time.  Can an Arab nation make it to the last 16 for the first time? If this is the first time your brand has engaged with the World Cup, there’s a natural starting point for your thinking.

The brands that win this World Cup will not necessarily be those with the biggest budgets, but those that are agile, authentic and place themselves at the heart of the conversation to build their reputation.

By Sam Buckett, Director of Sports and Entertainment, Burson