The 2026 World Cup’s marquee 8pm and 9pm kick-offs land while the summer sun is still up – and for the first time in years, fans face an unexpected problem: watching evening football in full glare of the sun.
Millions of football fans settling down to watch the World Cup this summer could find the low summer sun has other ideas about their viewing.
Because the 2026 World Cup is the first to be hosted across the US, Canada and Mexico, the big evening kick-offs land while it’s still bright outside in the UK – and many of the marquee fixtures kick off at 8pm or 9pm UK time, including England’s evening fixtures. With the sun not setting in London until well after 9pm, it sits low on the horizon and shines straight in through west-facing windows at the exact moment the football gets going.
That low-angle evening sun, according to Nick Bunce, TV expert at AO, is the single worst kind of light for a television.
Nick Bunce, TV Expert at AO, warns football fans not to get caught out:
“Everyone thinks sunlight glare is a midday problem, but it’s the opposite. A high midday sun shines down onto your floor. It’s the low evening sun, right at screen height, that comes straight through the window and bounces off the telly into your eyes. And eight or nine o’clock on a summer evening is about as low and as bright as it gets – which is exactly when so many of these games, England’s among them, kick off.”
Why a summer World Cup catches fans out
The last men’s World Cup, in Qatar in 2022, was a winter tournament, so UK kick-offs fell after dark.
A summer World Cup in North America flips that: the 8pm and 9pm kick-offs arrive in daylight, with the sun low in the northwest right through the evening – around 9:20pm in London, almost 9:45pm in Manchester and gone 10pm in Edinburgh in late June. This continues into July, with the sun still setting after 9pm.
The rooms that suffer most are those facing west, south-west or north-west, which catch the setting sun head-on. The result is a washed-out, greyed-over picture and reflections bouncing off the screen just as the action heats up.
Nick Bunce’s five free fixes before kick-off
- Move the TV out of the firing line. Don’t sit it directly opposite or beside a west-facing window. Even angling it away from the light cuts the reflections.
- Turn the brightness up, not down. At night you’d dim the screen, but to fight the sun you want the backlight or OLED brightness pushed towards maximum.
- Switch to a brighter picture mode. Use ‘Standard’, ‘Sport’ or ‘Vivid’ for a daytime game. Save ‘Cinema’ or ‘Filmmaker’ mode for after dark – it’s accurate, but built for a blackout.
- Turn off ‘eco’ mode. Power-saving settings cap the brightness to save energy, which is the last thing you want with the sun on the screen.
- Shut the curtains or blinds. It’s a shame to block out the summer sun completely, but if all else fails, this is the simplest and biggest win. For a low evening sun, blocking the window beats everything else.
Thinking of upgrading before the knockouts?
If the next game is the final straw, Nick’s advice is to shop for brightness, not just size.
“For a bright room, the number that matters is peak brightness, measured in nits. Look for 600 nits or more, and over 1,000 if your living room gets direct sun.
“A matte, anti-reflective screen helps too – it scatters the light instead of firing a hotspot back at you. That’s what counts for summer sport, far more than chasing the biggest screen in the shop.
“Buy early and test it before the big games, rather than panic-buying the night before. And with England’s evening fixtures still to come – and the semi-finals and final all kicking off at 8pm – the matches only get bigger, so it’s worth getting your set-up right now.”
Nick Bunce, TV expert at AO.
Photo by Vitaly Gariev: https://www.pexels.com/photo/group-of-friends-watching-tv-in-living-room-23495482/
