Actions are planned outside matches at SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles and Hard Rock Stadium in Miami, with further protests expected near venues in New Jersey, Seattle and Dallas.
Campaigners argue that fossil-fuel partnerships are increasingly difficult to reconcile with the rising heat affecting players, supporters and workers. They are also challenging similar sponsorship arrangements across baseball and Major League Soccer.
The movement has backing from current and former athletes, including Brent Suter and former English footballer David Wheeler. Wheeler, who is training as a sports psychologist, argues that heat protections address only the immediate symptoms, not the wider climate threat facing football.
has defended the Aramco partnership, saying sponsorship revenue is reinvested across the game, from elite competitions to grassroots football. Aramco’s chief executive has also previously presented the agreement as a way to use sport’s global reach to support opportunity and community development.
The governing body has introduced late-afternoon and evening kick-offs, hydration breaks and extreme-weather health protocols for the tournament. Those measures are expected to be central to ’s response as organisers face questions about whether safety planning can keep pace with increasingly severe conditions.
Research cited by campaigners suggests nearly all host stadiums are experiencing more extreme summer heat than during previous men’s World Cups held in North America. That makes the tournament an unusually visible test of football’s climate preparedness.
The protests will not decide ’s commercial policy on their own, but they sharpen a question football can no longer avoid: can the sport accept investment from industries activists accuse of worsening the conditions threatening its future?
With the tournament approaching, attention will turn to the size of the demonstrations, ’s response and whether players or national teams choose to engage publicly.