With the 2026 FIFA World Cup about to get under way, football fans in England and Scotland are honing their strategies to balance late kick-offs with work the next morning. England’s group games start at 2100 and 2200 BST, while Scotland’s go even later at 2300 and 0200, forcing many to choose between sleep and supporting their team.
Some have already booked annual leave around potential knockout fixtures. Scotland fan Cameron Rae, who works in a garage, took the Monday after the Haiti game off so he can attend a Tartan Army fan zone at his local town hall, complete with a bar and DJ running until 4am. “I booked the Monday off a while ago,” Rae said. “I work in a garage and we’re open as normal, so I probably wouldn’t get away with flexible working.”
“England and Scotland fans strategise annual leave and flexible working as 2026 World Cup kicks off.”
Fellow Scotland fan Krys Kujawa, a business analyst, thinks he can survive without days off – just about. “Haiti is early Sunday morning so there’s still all of Sunday to recover,” he said. “Morocco is late Friday night so you can just stay up and sleep in on Saturday. Brazil is the difficult one – that’s coffee-your-way-through-work territory.”
Scotland has a one-off national bank holiday on 15 June to celebrate the national team playing in its first World Cup since 1998, but it only applies to NHS Scotland and Scottish government employees. Local councils can opt in, but private businesses are not legally required to close. Kujawa said he would have “preferred the Bank Holiday after the Brazil match”, calling it a “bit of a buzzkill” knowing you have to go to work the next morning.
Unions and employment experts have warned businesses to prepare for a spike in so-called “World Cup sickies”. BrightHR, which monitors absences across more than one million UK employees, predicts at least 1.5 million workers will call in sick during the tournament, resulting in more than 2.3 million additional sickness absences. Research by workforce management company UKG suggests the World Cup could cost UK employers around £681m in lost productivity.
One company hoping to avoid the sickies is Birmingham-based digital agency Pull the Pin, where founder Sam Hufton has expanded the firm’s flexible working policy. “As a keen football fan, I’ve reminded everyone that if they want to watch a game and start a bit later, that’s fine, all we ask is that they’re transparent about it,” Hufton said.