As extreme heat and weather-related disruptions put fresh scrutiny on the 2026 FIFA World Cup, workers' compensation specialists say the bigger insurance concern may not be heat illness itself, but the vast temporary workforce needed to run one of the world's largest sporting events.
The tournament, hosted across the United States, Canada and Mexico, is the first men's World Cup to feature 48 teams and three host countries. FIFA's expanded format has heightened the operational complexity around venues, transport, hospitality and staffing.
That complexity is arriving during another summer of dangerous heat. Reuters reported in late June that an "imposing heat dome" had settled over the central and eastern US, with heat indices forecast to reach 105°F to 115°F in parts of the Midwest and East Coast, according to the National Weather Service.
Last weekend, a crucial knockout match between France and Paraguay proceeded amid temperatures of around 100°F, even as the city made a last-minute decision to scrap its flagship Fourth of July parade.
For Mark Walls, vice president of client engagement at Safety National, large events inevitably create workers' compensation exposures because of the sheer number of workers required. However, Walls said heat itself is not necessarily the largest claims driver, particularly where employers already have basic heat protocols in place.
"The employers have water, they have shades, they rotate (shifts), they look for signs of heat exhaustion,” he said. “It's part of the normal safety training to be sensitive to such things. I don't see the heat creating any greater exposures than what already exists in terms of just the size and scale of events like this.”
The National Safety Council, using Bureau of Labor Statistics data, reported that exposure to environmental heat resulted in 48 work-related deaths in 2024 and 7,100 DART (days away from work, restricted or transferred) cases across 2023 and 2024.
Over the same two-year period, falls, slips and trips produced 721,720 DART cases, and BLS logged roughly 2.49 million total recordable injury and illness cases in private industry in 2024 alone.
Still, heat can have an indirect effect on injuries. A 2024 Workers Compensation Research Institute study, drawing on workers' comp claims from 24 states, found that the probability of work-related accidents increases by 5% to 6% when maximum daily temperatures rise above 90°F, compared with days in the 65°F to 70°F range. The effect was stronger in the South and among construction workers.
Walls said he viewed those findings with some caution, because summer also brings more outdoor and higher-hazard work.
The more immediate issue for World Cup-related employers, he said, is the reliance on temporary and seasonal labor.
"Logistically, it's very challenging because you've got a whole lot of people who are mostly new employees, not a lot of training,” Walls told Insurance Business.
“Statistically speaking, newer workers have a higher injury rate,” Walls said. For an event of this scale, he added, that “could create a situation where you would expect there to be perhaps a higher-than-usual accident rate.'"
The good news is that the job mix may limit severity; he pointed to concession workers, ticket takers and custodial roles as examples of common event jobs that are not traditionally viewed as high hazard. But that does not eliminate losses.
The tournament is also unfolding as workplace heat regulation remains unsettled. OSHA's proposed Heat Injury and Illness Prevention in Outdoor and Indoor Work Settings standard was published in August 2024, with an informal public hearing held from June to July 2025 and post-hearing comments closing that October.
The rule would require covered employers to create a plan to evaluate and control workplace heat hazards. The rulemaking has since stalled, however, with no target date for a final standard.
Large corporate insurers are also taking note of the impacts of extreme weather on high-profile events like the World Cup. In commentary shared with Insurance Business, Adrian Hall, CEO USA at Swiss Re Corporate Solutions, said the World Cup shows how heat risk now extends beyond health and safety into broader resilience.
"The 2026 World Cup may become one of the first truly global mega-events of the extreme heat era," Hall said. "Extreme heat is no longer simply a weather issue. It is increasingly an operational and economic risk."
Hall said major events depend on reliable power, transportation, communications, hospitality and public infrastructure, all of which can come under pressure during sustained heat.
"What makes heat particularly challenging is that its effects are often interconnected," he said. "Risk rarely stays contained, and extreme heat is a powerful example of how disruptions can cascade through interconnected systems."
