The result: Spain 1-0 Argentina

Spain 1, Argentina 0, after extra time. That was the scoreline at MetLife Stadium on Sunday, July 19, 2026, and it flattered the losers. Ferran Torres, on as a substitute, struck in the 106th minute, in the second period of extra time, to win the World Cup.

It is Spain's second world title, 16 years after their first in 2010, and it completes an unusual double: Spain now hold the men's and women's World Cups at the same time, with Euro 2024 added in between. For Argentina, it was the end of a bid to become the first back-to-back champions since Brazil in 1958 and 1962.

How the final unfolded

Rodri ran the game. Spain's midfielder, later named the tournament's best player, dictated the tempo from the opening whistle, and Argentina never found a way through him. The numbers are brutal: Spain had 20 shots, Argentina had two, and not one of them was on target across 120 minutes. Lionel Messi, in what may prove to be his last World Cup match, dropped deeper and deeper looking for the ball and found only white shirts.

The game turned in stoppage time at the end of normal time. Enzo Fernández, booked in the 82nd minute for dissent, caught Pau Cubarsí with a heavy challenge in the 93rd and was shown a second yellow by referee Slavko Vinčić. Argentina played the whole of extra time with ten men, and in the 106th minute Spain broke through: Torres applied the finish that won the World Cup. Emiliano Martínez had kept Argentina alive with 11 saves, the most ever made in a World Cup final, but he could not make it 12.

There was a sour postscript. After the whistle, Leandro Paredes was sent off following a brawl in which he grabbed Eric García by the throat and threw Gavi to the turf before being pulled away by Thiago Almada. It was the second red card in a final that produced six yellows. Then came the image that will outlast all of it: Messi in tears at the trophy ceremony, his international future unclear.

It was also the first World Cup final to stage a halftime show. Curated by Coldplay's Chris Martin, it put Madonna, Shakira, BTS, Justin Bieber and conductor Gustavo Dudamel on the MetLife turf, alongside Burna Boy, Jennifer Hudson, the PS22 Chorus and (genuinely) the Muppets, who joined an orchestral “Seven Nation Army.” The moment that cut through for football fans was smaller: Madonna arriving driven by Ronaldo Nazário, with Ronaldinho riding shotgun.

Read more: Extra time and penalties explained

Golden Boot and top scorers

Kylian Mbappé won the Golden Boot with 10 goals in eight matches. He won it despite France going out in the semifinals, adding two in the third-place game against England. Jude Bellingham and Erling Haaland both finished on seven, with Bellingham ranked ahead on the assists tiebreaker, the mechanism FIFA uses to separate players level on goals.

Two records came with it. Mbappé is the first player to win the Golden Boot at consecutive men's World Cups, having also topped the charts in Qatar in 2022. And with 22 goals across 2018, 2022 and 2026, he is now the leading scorer in World Cup history, passing Messi's 21. The tournament's most creative player never made this list: France winger Michael Olise led all assists with seven.

Every 2026 World Cup award

Spain took four of the individual prizes, and the two that went elsewhere both went to losing finalists or semifinalists, a fair summary of how the tournament finished.

Unai Simón's Golden Glove came with a record attached: seven clean sheets in a single World Cup, beating a previous best of five that had stood jointly since the 1970s. Pau Cubarsí, 19 years old and a starter in all eight Spain matches, became the first defender ever to win the Best Young Player award.

Road to the final

Neither finalist took an easy path through a knockout bracket that, for the first time, began with a Round of 32.

The semifinals could hardly have been more different. Spain beat France 2-0 in a game they controlled throughout: Lamine Yamal won a penalty that Mikel Oyarzabal converted in the 22nd minute, and Pedro Porro made it two in the 58th. Argentina's night against England was chaos. They were losing with ten minutes left before Enzo Fernández levelled from outside the box in the 85th, and Lautaro Martínez won it two minutes into extra time.

One number stands out from Spain's run: the 2-1 quarterfinal win over Belgium produced the only goal they conceded in the entire tournament.

Read more: The knockout stage and Round of 32 explained

The biggest upsets and shocks

The defining story of the knockout rounds was that none of the hosts survived them. All three went out in the Round of 16: Canada were beaten 3-0 by Morocco, Mexico lost a thriller 3-2 to England, and the United States were dismantled 4-1 by Belgium in Seattle. No World Cup had seen every host nation eliminated that early, and the last host to actually win the thing remains France in 1998.

Cape Verde were the tournament's fairytale. An Atlantic archipelago of roughly half a million people, playing at their first World Cup, they held eventual champions Spain to a 0-0 draw in the group stage, drew 2-2 with Uruguay, and reached the Round of 32. There they took Argentina to extra time before losing 3-2, with goalkeeper Vozinha producing the kind of performance that gets a stadium chanting a name it had never heard before.

Uruguay, by contrast, never got going and were gone in the group stage. The expanded format also produced a run of cautious, low-risk football in mid-June (including a day on which all four matches finished level, matching a record for draws in a single World Cup day that had stood since 1958), as teams worked out that a point was often enough to reach the Round of 32.

Heartbreaks and farewells

Cristiano Ronaldo's last World Cup ended in the Round of 16, and it ended against the eventual champions. Portugal lost 1-0 to Spain in a tight, low-scoring tie that summed up the Spanish campaign: one goal was enough, because it usually was.

Messi's may have ended the same night as Spain's triumph. He finished the tournament with eight goals and the Silver Ball, dragged Argentina through a brutal knockout bracket, and then could not get near the ball in the final. The pictures of him crying at the ceremony were the images of the night; he has not said whether he will play another.

Egypt came closest of anyone to a genuine giant-killing in the knockout rounds, running Argentina to 3-2 in the Round of 16 before going out.

The records set in 2026

A tournament of firsts: some structural, some the work of one very good defense.

• Spain conceded one goal in eight matches, the meanest World Cup campaign on record.
• Unai Simón kept seven clean sheets in a single World Cup, beating the previous best of five.
• Kylian Mbappé became the all-time leading World Cup scorer with 22 goals, and the first man to win the Golden Boot at consecutive tournaments.
• Emiliano Martínez made 11 saves in the final, more than any goalkeeper in World Cup final history.
• Pau Cubarsí became the first defender to be named Best Young Player.
• The first 48-team World Cup: 104 matches over 39 days across 16 host cities and three countries.

The controversy: a phone call and a red card

The tournament's biggest off-field story arrived in the Round of 32. Folarin Balogun was sent off in the United States' win over Bosnia and Herzegovina for a foul on Tarik Muharemović, and the automatic one-match ban would have ruled him out of the Round of 16. President Donald Trump then called FIFA president Gianni Infantino to ask for a review. “I asked for a review because I didn't think it was a foul,” Trump said.

FIFA suspended the ban under Article 27 of its disciplinary code, which allows a judicial body to suspend a disciplinary measure in full or in part; Balogun's suspension was deferred for a one-year probationary period and he started against Belgium. The decision drew heavy criticism from within the sport: UEFA said FIFA had “crossed a red line” and called the ruling “unprecedented, incomprehensible and unjustifiable.” The United States lost the match 4-1.

How the 48-team format worked

2026 was the first World Cup with 48 teams instead of 32. They were split into 12 groups of four, and each team played three group-stage matches. The top two in every group advanced along with the eight best third-placed teams, which created a brand-new Round of 32 ahead of the Round of 16, the quarterfinals, the semifinals and the final.

That added up to 104 matches across 39 days, up from 64 in Qatar. The group stage ran from June 11 to June 27, with the last round of games in each group kicking off simultaneously to protect competitive balance, and the knockout rounds ran from late June through to the final on July 19. The semifinals were played at AT&T Stadium in Dallas and Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta.

Read more: World Cup 2026 format explained: 48 teams, 12 groups, Round of 32

How the host nations fared

Mexico, Canada and the United States were seeded into Groups A, B and D. All three got out of their group. All three went out in the Round of 16.

The 16 host cities

The first World Cup shared between three countries used 16 stadiums: 11 in the United States, three in Mexico and two in Canada.

The official ball: adidas Trionda

The official match ball was the adidas Trionda (Spanish for “three waves”), with a red, green and blue design representing the three host nations. It used connected-ball technology that relayed data to assist VAR decisions, including the offside and handball calls that shaped more than one knockout tie.

World Cup 2026 guides and explainers

• World Cup 2026 format explained: 48 teams, 12 groups, Round of 32
• The knockout stage and Round of 32 explained
• Groups, predictions and full fixtures
• Extra time and penalties explained
• All World Cup 2026 guides and head-to-heads

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