Bring World Cup excitement to your classroom this summer

The FIFA Men’s World Cup is one of the world’s biggest sporting events and a brilliant opportunity to spark excitement, creativity, and cross-curricular learning.

What's special about the 2026 World Cup?

The 2026 FIFA Men’s World Cup will be the largest tournament in the competition’s history, featuring 48 teams competing across the United States, Canada and Mexico. The tournament will begin on 11th June 2026 and conclude on 19th July 2026, with the final taking place at the MetLife Stadium in New Jersey. Matches will be played across 16 host cities, marking the first FIFA World Cup to be jointly hosted by three nations.

Celebrating the World Cup in Schools

Football-themed activities are a great way to build excitement and boost engagement across the curriculum, whether your pupils are passionate fans or simply enjoying the tournament's buzz.

Free World Cup Resource Pack

Develop Primary Football Skills with Striver

Striver helps pupils build both physical and mental wellbeing with engaging PE lessons and activities. In the World Cup Pack, teachers will find football-themed activities like Narrow Shot, Speed Dribble, and Target Ball.

These activities help pupils develop teamwork, coordination, ball control, and confidence, all while keeping them active and engaged.

The pack also has lesson plans for Years 1, 3, and 5, making it easy for teachers to add football into PE lessons during the tournament. All lessons can be adapted for other year groups.

Get Creative with Football Activities on Purple Mash

The excitement continues beyond the football field.

Teachers can access a variety of football-themed activities that help develop creativity and digital skills, including

• World Cup Footballer Mashcam
• Paint Your Own Football Shirt
• Player Profiles
• Match Reports
• Coding a goal with micro:bits

Discover More World Cup and Football Resources in Purple Mash

If you have a Purple Mash subscription we have a whole range of resources that schools can use throughout the tournament.

For each of the groups, there are template fact files that children can use to research the countries taking part - including attractions, languages spoken and previous football achievements.

Within each folder alongside the fact files there is also a template that will help pupils write match reports about the teams.

There is also a History of the World Cup Slideshow for the children to watch and then use our template to write about what they learned. There are also templates for research and writing about the previous winners of the World Cup, a World Cup Match Tracker, World Cup Quiz as well as a range of coding games and paint projects.

World Cup Competition for Schools

We are also running not one but two competitions for Purple Mash subscribers:

World Cup Super Hero - All Ages

Read about the greatest superhero football match in the universe in Fantastic 5-a-side, then create your own Super Hero footballer fact file - complete with a drawing, a name and a description of their super power!

World Cup Writing – KS2

KS2 pupils are invited to finish a piece of writing in 500 words. What will the outcome be? That's entirely up to them — the only limit is their imagination!

Pupils have until 5pm on 6th July to enter both competitions. Winners could bag a World Cup football shirt of their choice and a 2Simple goody bag. 🏅