why does the world cup feel so different in 2026

Let me make one thing very clear: I do not care about football. 

I played girls football in school and they stuck me in goal because I was too lazy to run around the pitch. This turned out to be a terrible idea, because the one thing I hated more than running was getting hit with footballs as I attempted to defend by goalposts. My brother played football growing up and I would be carted out to watch his amateur games against other pre-teen boys. I would argue with my parents to let me stay in the car, and they often conceded, collecting me after the final whistle and rewarding my patience with a cheap burger from the clubhouse kitchen. Most of the men, and a few of the women, in my family are football lovers, so I know the unique pain of sitting through 90 minutes (plus extra time) of a sport I have absolutely no interest in. 

But I will say, I do like a competition. I like having someone to root for and against, and if I'm in a beer garden with a ciggie and a pint, it feels almost natural to get a little bit patriotic. Don't get me wrong, I will never know the names of the players and I don't need to know what the off-side rule is. But there are some rare occasions where I will watch a game, either by chance or by choice. In 2024, I lived with a male housemate (never again, btw) who managed to get his all-female house invested in the Euros. It was a lovely summer of light-touch patriotism as England soared to the final against Spain, which we piled into the local to watch one sunny afternoon. It was all going so well, until it wasn't. I watched the joy evaporate from the room and the hollow disappointment spread across every face in the pub. Then I watched the racial hatred that barrelled towards Bukayo Saka online, and any shred of empathy I felt was soon squashed.

However, the World Cup is supposed to be different; uniting people over a sense of English-ness for a competition against the rest of the world for national pride. I'm not sure whether this is a feeling every country has, but English people love to hate one another, until someone who isn't English decides to hate us too. This specific brand of English-ness prioritises community, encourages a collective national identity that welcomes multi-culturalism. And, of course, the England flag is to be seen everywhere; for the Euros, we hung red and white tee towels in our window in place of the flag, and my aforementioned male housemate ordered a wrinkled England flag online and wore it like a pashmina for weeks. But as we know, the England flag has been co-opted by a particular group of people that my empathy struggles to reach. 

The World Cup in 2026 means something different, because the England flag in 2026 means something different. Even me, someone who invests the minimum amount of attention in football, has seen it; falling from the top of lampposts and dodging traffic to spray paint wonky red crosses on white mini-roundabouts. Ten years ago, that flag came out for the football and whenever the royals did something news-worthy, and then it would disappear into the background of our minds. It was never a symbol of national identity. No one had England flags up in their house. No one had them up on flagpoles in their front gardens. People sported cheap little car accessories for a fixed amount of time that ended up in a kitchen drawer until the following summer; just a little white rectangle with a red cross on it.

That same cross feels very different today. Conversations about immigration grew violent very quickly, and the England flag became the uniform of a movement that harbours misplaced anger and childish hatred. It is now a political prop and nothing more; adorned by Reform fans who don't care about any of Farage's policies outside of immigration, advertised to the public as a symbol of home and promising a tangible sense of belonging that will make them feel less lost; those whose grandparents were born in Ireland and moved to England to set up a new life in a country that offered better opportunities for them. Someone sound the irony alarm! 

The rhetoric isn't new because the story never actually changes, it just flicks between scapegoats. The rise of conservatism can be tracked in everything; it's in our politics, our entertainment, our conversations, and our media consumption. We're backtracking on established benchmarks that I never expected to see this far into my life. At work recently, I had a health and safety meeting about the national terrorism threat level rising from substantial to severe. Just so we're all on the same page; substantial means an attack is likely, and severe means an attack is highly likely. We are at a 4 out of 5 on the panic scale and no one seems to be panicking.

So, I do apologise if I'm not feeling particularly proud to be English as of late. This World Cup comes at a time where the England flag is almost trauma-inducing to see, and while I always allow space for the benefit of the doubt to prevail, I don't sense it 'coming home' any time soon. That's why it feels different this year; the usually chants are fuelled by anger and fear, and the wedge that has been pushed between us all. Although I don't feel attached to the world of football, I understand it well. Everyone has a chance to win, and for England, it's about a sense of belonging and a feeling of 'home', that many feel has been taken away from them.

I won't hold my breath while I wait for the fascists to do the right thing, because we all know how much domestic violence against women spikes when England don't qualify. All I hope is that this football season, English people can give me a reason to feel any pride in our flag, because all I feel when I see it now is absolute calamity.