Help your children enjoy the 2026 Football World Cup without idolising it

Jonny Reid believes that Christian parents can help children enjoy every goal and game in the Football World Cup, while keeping their hearts anchored in Christ—not the final score

The 2026 World Cup is expected to be the largest sporting event in history. If you’re reading this you may have the wall chart up, diarised the matches and be getting bizarrely optimistic that this year could be the one (as a Scotland fan that optimism relates to us maybe getting out of our group!) 

For a few weeks this summer, the World Cup will dominate conversations, screens, schools, and family life. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

Children learn what matters by watching what excites us, what upsets us and what we spend our time discussing

Sport captures the full range of human emotions in just a few hours. It gives us moments of joy, disappointment, belonging and wonder. It brings people together like little else can in our broken world. In many ways, sport is a wonderful gift from God to help us delight in him and his creation.

But every four years the World Cup also reminds us how powerful sport can be. Children learn what matters by watching what excites us, what upsets us and what we spend our time discussing. The World Cup is not just entertaining us, it is shaping us and those we spend time with.

Few events reveal the power of sport - or the loyalties of our hearts - quite like the World Cup

So the question for Christian parents, is not whether our children will be discipled by the World Cup, but ……