World Cup 2026 Ratings: USMNT Leads Group Stage Match Viewership On Fox; Brazil-Morocco, Argentina-Algeria Also Set U.S. Audience Records

The 2026 FIFA Men’s World Cup has been off to quite the hot start this month.

Since opening weekend, the matches have already broken several U.S. viewership records. Things are still quite early, signaling even bigger audiences may be on the horizon during the later stages. For now, the USMNT’s win over Paraguay stands as not only the most-watched match of the 2026 World Cup in the U.S. thus far but also the most-watched World Cup telecast ever for English-language U.S. audiences with more than 18M viewers across Fox, FS1 and Tubi.

That is a 132% increase from the USMNT’s first World Cup group stage telecast on Fox in 2022, when the team faced Wales to the tune of 7.8M viewers. This year’s audience peaked with an impressive 21.5M viewers.

Brazil v. Morocco takes second place, but it’s not very close. The match scored 10M viewers on Fox alone, though, and final numbers with streaming aren’t quite available yet. So this will likely inch up. Still, it’s the most-watched non-USMNT FIFA Men’s World Cup group stage telecast in English-language U.S. history, up 212% from the 2022 FIFA Men’s World Cup non-USMNT Group Stage telecast average on Fox, which was 3.2M viewers.

From there, Argentina v. Algeria raked in 9.1M viewers, trailing closely behind Brazil-Morocco. Netherlands v. Japan and Mexico v. South Africa round out the Top 5 for now.

Check back throughout the tournament to see the biggest audiences for the 2026 World Cup.