With the 2026 FIFA World Cup kicking off across the US, Canada and Mexico, England fans face 9pm and 10pm starts for their group games, while Scotland supporters must stay up until 11pm or even 2am BST. For those with early morning shifts, the arithmetic is brutal.
Cameron Rae, a Scotland fan who works in a garage, has already booked the Monday after the Haiti game off work 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,” he said. “We’re open as normal, so I probably wouldn’t get away with flexible working.”
“Fans book leave and plan late nights for World Cup, as firms brace for £681m in lost productivity.”
Fellow Scotland supporter Krys Kujawa, a business analyst, thinks he can survive the late nights without taking days off—just. “Haiti is early Sunday morning so there’s still all of Sunday to recover,” he told the BBC. “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 will enjoy a one-off national bank holiday on 15 June to mark the team’s first World Cup since 1998, but only NHS Scotland and Scottish government staff are entitled to the day off. Local councils can opt in or out, and private businesses are not legally obliged to close or grant the extra holiday. Kujawa admitted he would have “preferred the Bank Holiday after the Brazil match” as it’s 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 surge 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 trying to turn a potential problem into a perk is Birmingham-based digital agency Pull the Pin. Founder Sam Hufton, a keen football fan, has expanded the firm’s flexible working policy. “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,” he said. As England and Scotland chase glory on the other side of the Atlantic, millions of workers face the same question: how to stay onside with their boss while staying up for the match.