Nelson Mandela once declared that sport has the power to create hope where despair once ruled. In 2026, that optimism feels like a relic. The sporting world is under siege — not from rival teams or doping scandals, but from a climate crisis that is reshaping every pitch, river, mountain and stadium on the planet.
How the climate crisis is dismantling sport as we know it
Extreme weather events have already wiped out competitions across every continent. Floods, wildfires and violent storms have rendered grounds unplayable, cancelling fixtures at both grassroots and elite levels. This isn’t a future threat — it’s happening right now, every season.
The health risks are equally alarming. Heat exhaustion, heatstroke, asthma and cardiovascular disease all increase when temperatures spike and air quality deteriorates. During the Shanghai Masters, tennis player Holger Rune captured the mood perfectly when he turned to an official and asked bluntly : “Do you want a player to die on court ?” That wasn’t a dramatic flourish — it was a legitimate question. Dangerous heat and toxic air don’t just endanger athletes; officials and spectators are equally exposed.
Performance suffers too. High pollution and abnormal temperatures raise injury risk and reduce athletic output measurably. For countries already exposed to climate vulnerability — think small island nations — the stakes are even higher. Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley put it plainly : “We have to play on the pitch as it is, not as you would like it.” Richer nations and powerful sports bodies, frankly, keep looking away.
The 2026 Winter Paralympic Games illustrated the problem starkly, with warmer temperatures directly cutting the amount of natural snow available on competition courses. And those were the Winter Games — supposedly built for cold. The 2025 Winter Olympics at Milan Cortina required water to be pumped from struggling rivers just to manufacture artificial snow. That image alone should stop you in your tracks.
Fossil fuel money flooding into global sport
Here’s where things get genuinely uncomfortable. The 2024 report “Dirty Money” published by the New Weather Institute revealed that a combination of state-owned and private fossil fuel companies were spending at least $5.6 billion across 205 active global sport sponsorship deals. The pattern mirrors almost exactly what the tobacco industry did decades ago — using sport’s gleaming image to launder a damaging reputation.
The 2026 men’s football World Cup, flagged by Scientists for Global Responsibility as the most polluting tournament in history, will feature wall-to-wall advertising from Aramco, the world’s single largest corporate greenhouse gas emitter. Estimated greenhouse gas emissions for this tournament run 92% higher than a typical World Cup held between 2010 and 2022. That number is not a typo.
Writer David Goldblatt has estimated that sport’s total carbon footprint sits somewhere between that of Cuba and Poland — the size of a small-to-medium nation. Sport talks endlessly about sustainability targets while simultaneously chasing bigger audiences, fatter broadcast deals and new markets. The contradiction is glaring.
| Event / Organization | Climate issue | Details |
|---|---|---|
| 2026 FIFA World Cup | Carbon emissions | GHG up 92% vs 2010–2022 average |
| Milan Cortina 2025 Winter Olympics | Snow scarcity | Artificial snow made from pumped river water |
| Global sport (2024 estimate) | Fossil fuel sponsorship | $5.6bn across 205 active deals |
| Shanghai Masters | Heat and air quality | Holger Rune challenged officials over player safety |
Grassroots resistance and the organisations fighting back
Fans and athletes aren’t passive spectators in all this. Sport has always been a catalyst for action — it drags you out for a run on a grey November morning and wakes you at 2am for a Test match. That same energy is now being redirected toward climate activism, and the results are real.
Several movements have emerged with genuine momentum :
- Surfers Against Sewage — campaigning for clean water and ocean health
- Fossil Free Football — challenging fossil fuel sponsorship in the beautiful game
- Protect Our Winters — founded by snowsports athletes facing disappearing winters
- FrontRunners — runners using their sport to advocate for climate action
Individual actors matter too. Forest Green Rovers, the Gloucestershire football club widely recognised as the world’s greenest, has set a benchmark for how clubs can operate sustainably. Australian cricket captain Pat Cummins has spoken openly about the climate threat to his sport. Meanwhile, Fillongley CC, a village cricket club, appeared in the UK pavilion at COP30 after planting for nature on their grounds.
On the commercial side, alternative sponsorship models are starting to emerge. Rugby’s Super League partnered with Northern Rail. Cricket aligned with Metrobank, a Bank Green-approved institution. Oxford United released a limited-edition shirt featuring an interpretation of John Ruskin’s “Study of a Wild Rose”, timed to coincide with a new exhibition at the Ashmolean museum. These aren’t just marketing moves — they signal a different set of values.
What the sport-climate relationship demands from us now
Some Olympic disciplines are now directly threatened with elimination due to climate-related pressures — and that trajectory will accelerate unless the wider sporting ecosystem makes hard choices fast.
The data is there. The expertise exists. Sports fans represent an enormous, underutilised force — statistically engaged, emotionally invested, and capable of driving commercial and political pressure. That combination of passionate fandom and hard scientific evidence is, frankly, one of the most powerful levers available for climate advocacy.
Sport knows how to come from behind. It’s practically the founding myth of the game. The real question isn’t whether sport can adapt to the climate crisis — it’s whether the people running it will stop protecting short-term revenue long enough to let that adaptation actually happen.
