The 2026 World Cup is now almost one week old.
With 20 games played so far.
Just 84 more to go and the 104th and final one will be the final on Sunday 19 July 2026.
There are 72 group matches and then another 32 in the knockout stages that follow, including the third place play-off.
Only one goalless game (Spain v Cape Verde) and of the other 19 played so far, only two of them (Scotland 1 Haiti 0, Ivory Coast 1 Ecuador 0) have had less than two goals.
At the other end of the spectrum Germany 7 Curacao 1 has been the highest scoring, that is one of eight of the 20 played so far that have had four or more goals in them.
With 40 of the 48 teams having played a match, 33 of the 40 have scored one or more goals.
With 62 goals scored so far in 20 matches, how does the 2026 World Cup compare to previous tournaments when it comes to goals scored across a tournament?
Average Goals Per Match at the FIFA World Cup (2022–1930)
Historical scoring averages across every tournament in reverse chronological order. Best viewed in landscape mode on mobile.
* Red text indicates the highest-scoring tournament average in World Cup history (1954). Blue text indicates the lowest-scoring tournament average (1990).
As you can see, in modern day World Cups after 1958, there has never been one that averaged three goals per game or better.
Mexico in 1970 came closest to reaching the three goals a game average, just failing with 2.97.
With 62 goals in 20 games, this tournament averaging 3.10 goals per match so far.
Can the 2026 World Cup be the one to finally do it, average three goals or more across 104 matches?