The 2026 FIFA World Cup kicks off on 11 June in Mexico City, and for the next five weeks the living room television is going to be showing a lot of football. Forty-eight countries, twelve groups, sixteen venues across the United States, Canada and Mexico. The final is on 19 July in New Jersey.
If you have primary school aged children, you already know what this means. More requests to stay up late (very late in the UK in some cases!), more hours in front of screens, and more conversations about why Curaçao is a country and where exactly it is.
That last one is actually the interesting part.
The biggest World Cup ever
This is the first tournament to feature 48 nations, up from the 32 that competed in Qatar in 2022. The expanded format means more countries, more groups and more matches than ever before. For anyone trying to follow the tournament seriously, that's a lot of flags to learn.
England are in Group L alongside Croatia, Ghana and Panama. Scotland are in Group C with Brazil, Morocco and Haiti. Those alone are eight countries worth finding on a map before the first whistle blows on 11 June.
Six continents are represented. The full list of competing nations spans Europe, South America, North and Central America, Africa, Asia and Oceania. That's a genuinely global event in a way that few others are.
The screen time problem
Here's the honest tension. A tournament that runs from 11 June to 19 July, with games at various times night and highlights during the day, is a significant addition to the average family's screen time. For parents already thinking carefully about how much time children spend looking at devices, a month of wall-to-wall football coverage adds a new layer of complexity.
We wrote about this earlier in the year when the BBC published guidance on children and screen time. The short version is that it isn't simply about hours logged. It is about what's happening during that time, whether children are engaged or passive, and what gets displaced.
The World Cup is one of those moments where screen time and learning can genuinely coexist. Watching a match between England and Panama can be the start of a conversation about Central America, about about what the capital city is and what the flag looks like. The question is whether that conversation actually happens or whether the screen just runs in the background.
48 flags worth knowing
One of the things we love about a tournament like this is that it puts flags in front of children and adults alike. Suddenly the flag of Cabo Verde (Cape Verde), or Curaçao, or Uzbekistan appears on screen and there's a flash of natural inquisitiveness. Countries we don't generally talk about or visit.
Forty-eight countries means forty-eight flags. Some are instantly recognisable. Others are genuinely surprising. Did you know that Brazil's flag contains a night sky with stars representing each of its states? Or that Croatia's distinctive red and white chequered design dates back to medieval times?
Our Flags of the World flashcards cover all the competing nations and many more (216 in total!). Each card shows the flag on one side and key facts on the other: continent, capital, currency, population, size. Updated earlier this year to reflect recent changes including Bulgaria joining the Eurozone. They're the kind of resource that turns a tournament into a proper geography lesson without feeling like one.
Where in the world?
Beyond the flags, the tournament is an opportunity to do something very simple that most children find surprisingly engaging: look at a map.
Where is Ghana relative to Morocco? How far is Panama from England? Which countries share a border with France, who are in Group I? These are the kinds of questions that a world map on the kitchen wall or the dining table can answer in a glance, and the answers stick in a way that reading a textbook never quite manages.
Our World Map Poster and World Map Placemat both make the geography of the tournament immediately accessible. When England play Croatia in Group L, finding both countries on the map takes about ten seconds. By the end of the group stage, children have located twenty or thirty countries without it feeling like work.
A tournament full of stories
Part of what makes the World Cup special for children isn't the football itself. It is the stories around it. Brazil competing in their twenty-third World Cup, the only nation to appear in every tournament since 1930. Argentina defending the title they won in Qatar. Scotland in the same group as Brazil, which would have seemed unimaginable a few years ago.
Each of those stories has a geography attached to it. Across countries and continents, the 'magic' of the World Cup isn't just about the football, it's a chance to learn about our world and the many cultures it has.
The tournament runs until 19 July. That's five weeks of opportunities to ask questions, find countries on a map, learn a flag and understand a little more about the world. The television is going to be on anyway.
Our Flags of the World flashcards, World Map Poster and World Map Placemat are all available now. Designed by qualified teachers, made in the EU and UK respectively.