Urban Heat Intelligence / FIFA 2026
For the first time in World Cup history, every match will include mandatory hydration breaks.
The players get hydration breaks. The fans get asphalt.
We used Landsat satellite data to map the heat they'll walk through.
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Before we begin

Surface temperature is not air temperature.

When a satellite passes overhead, it measures the skin of the earth — rooftops, asphalt, grass. A parking lot at 54°C does not mean the air is 54°C. It means the ground is radiating heat that makes the air above it hotter, longer. It means the surface stores energy during the day and releases it at night, keeping neighborhoods warm when they should be cooling down.

Every temperature in this piece is surface temperature, measured by Landsat 8 and 9. The numbers are higher than a weather forecast. They are also more precise — 30-meter resolution, from space, on a specific day.

Landsat 8/9 thermal infrared 54°C 31°C 46°C heat stored in surface → released at night 30m pixels 200m hexagons 26.3°C thermal spread heat island patterns
North America, Summer 2026

16 stadiums. 3 countries. 104 matches.

Surface temperature measured by Landsat 8 and 9 at 30-meter resolution. Aggregated into 200-meter hexagonal cells.

Surface temp <35°C — 50°C+
Dot size 4 — 8 matches
Mexico City / Opening Match

June 11. The World Cup opens at Estadio Azteca.

46.3°C
Surface temperature at the stadium

The gap between the coolest park and the hottest parking lot is 26.3°C — wider than any other host city. Same day. Same satellite. Same city.

Guadalajara / Hottest Stadium
54.6°C
Surface temperature at the stadium

The hottest stadium in the tournament. Estadio Akron. Four group-stage matches. 49,850 seats. Open air. No air conditioning. Hotter than nearly three-quarters of the city around it.

Dallas / The AC Paradox

AT&T Stadium has AC and a retractable roof.

49.1°C
Surface temperature

7 matches, including a semifinal. The parking lot doesn't have AC. Fans will cross it in June heat to reach an air-conditioned interior.

Kansas City / The Heat Island Peak

Arrowhead Stadium: 99th percentile.

47.3°C
Hotter than 99% of the metro

Arrowhead sits on 26 hectares of asphalt — one of the largest parking footprints in the NFL. Fans walk 400 meters from their car to the gate, across surfaces that have been absorbing sun since dawn.

Atlanta / The Exception

The city built inside a forest.

34.8°C
Surface temperature — the smallest heat gap

Atlanta has the smallest thermal gap of all 16 host cities. Even its hottest hexagons have an NDVI of 0.31 — greener than most cities' coolest spots. The urban canopy works. Mercedes-Benz Stadium has a retractable roof. The city around it has trees.

New York / The Final

MetLife Stadium, New Jersey.

28.2°C
Surface temperature — 2nd percentile

The coolest stadium in the tournament. Eight matches, including the final. 28.2°C at the surface — cooler than 98% of the metro.

But New York's risk is not heat. It is humidity. A wet-bulb temperature above 26°C is more dangerous than dry heat at 35°C. The body stops cooling itself — sweat no longer evaporates. July in the New York metro averages 24°C wet-bulb. A warm spike during the final could push it past the threshold.

Sixteen stadiums. Three countries. One pattern.

In every city we mapped, the parking infrastructure around the venue is hotter than the surrounding neighborhood. The players get cooling breaks. Nobody designed one for the walk to the gate.

Not every stadium demands that walk. Mercedes-Benz in Atlanta sits next to a MARTA rail station. MetLife is reachable by NJ Transit from Penn Station. BC Place and BMO Field have rail stops adjacent. For those venues, the heat island exists but fewer fans cross it.

The worst exposure falls on the car-dependent stadiums — Arrowhead, NRG, AT&T — where the parking lot is the only way in. The infrastructure choice is the heat story: cities that built transit access built shade from the worst of it.

Two years of heat. One city breathing.

66 satellite passes over Guadalajara, January 2024 through December 2025. Watch the heat island expand through the dry spring and retreat when the rainy season arrives. Kickoff at 6pm means 49,850 fans walking across a surface that has been cooking since dawn.

Each particle: one 200m hexagonal cell. Height and color encode surface temperature. Street network: OpenStreetMap.

Sixteen stadiums, ranked.

Surface temperature at each FIFA 2026 stadium, from Landsat.

Guadalajara is the hottest. Boston is the coolest. The spread is 24.6°C — the difference between comfortable pavement and a surface that burns skin on contact.

Same color scale across all maps. Same 200-meter resolution. The patterns vary but the parking lots are consistently the hottest zones.

Click any map to enlarge.

1. Guadalajara — 54.6°C
2. Houston — 49.5°C
3. Dallas — 49.1°C
4. Kansas City — 47.3°C
5. Mexico City — 46.3°C
6. Philadelphia — 46.1°C
7. New York — 43.6°C
8. Miami — 43.4°C
9. Seattle — 43.3°C
10. Los Angeles — 39.8°C
11. Vancouver — 39.3°C
12. San Francisco — 38.8°C
13. Toronto — 36.1°C
14. Atlanta — 34.8°C
15. Monterrey — 31.6°C
16. Boston — 30.0°C

The parking lot problem.

Every fan's journey starts the same way: car door opens, feet hit asphalt, the walk begins. By the time they reach the gate, they have crossed the hottest surface in the neighborhood. Every stadium. Every city. The parking is always hotter.

Guadalajara's gap is the widest: 19.4°C between the coolest park and the hottest pavement near Estadio Akron. Atlanta's is the smallest at 11.3°C — the tree canopy compresses the range. Most cities fall between 13 and 20 degrees of thermal penalty.

Kansas City's Arrowhead sits at the 99th percentile of its own metro — the hottest spot in the city. Most stadiums rank above the 50th. They were built for car access, not thermal comfort.

Green = park/green space (coolest 5%). Orange = stadium. Red = parking/asphalt (hottest 5%). Percentile shown per city.

So what cools a city down?

In Vancouver, the hottest 5% of hexagons have an NDVI — a satellite measure of greenness — of 0.04. The coolest 5% score 0.31. That is a sevenfold difference. The pattern repeats in every city we mapped.

Kansas City's coolest cells are three times greener than its hottest. Atlanta breaks the mold — even its hot spots have trees (NDVI 0.31), because the city is built inside a forest canopy. It also has the smallest thermal spread of all 16 metros. Trees are not decoration. They are infrastructure.

Every stadium parking lot in this study falls on the magenta end: hot surface, no canopy. The cheapest cooling strategy is already known. It is a tree.

Bivariate map

Magenta = hot and bare. Teal = cool and vegetated. 5 km radius around the stadium. Click to enlarge.

Trees are infrastructure. So is knowing where the heat is.

We build urban climate intelligence for cities, venues, and organizations that want to see their heat signature before it becomes a headline.

hi@tynstudio.com