The report says projections have put the US impact as high as $17.2bn in GDP growth and $40.9bn in gross output. Those are eye-catching totals, and they help explain the political and civic push behind the tournament.
But the same update says economists looking at past World Cups have struggled to find evidence of a meaningful shift in a host nation’s long-term economic path.
Those figures are not nothing. They are simply small when spread across economies of this size.
This is where the World Cup can still look transformative. A month-long tournament concentrates visitors, media, transport demand and hospitality spending into a limited number of places.
Hotels fill. Bars trade heavily. Public transport gets stretched. Temporary jobs appear. That effect is real, especially in city centres and fan zones.
What blunts the national story is leakage:
That is why the local picture can be vivid while the national one remains modest.
The strongest case for hosting may not be GDP at all. It may be visibility, civic pride and the shared experience of staging the biggest event in football. Those returns are harder to measure, but they are often closer to the truth of why countries chase tournaments in the first place.
As planning accelerates toward 2026, the next debate to watch is whether host governments keep selling growth projections - or shift the argument toward delivery, legacy and the fan experience on the ground.