Smart World Cup 2026 match schedule

Until then, every 4 years, the whole world is vibrant with the atmosphere of the biggest football festival on the planet.

This year's World Cup is the first time this football tournament has the participation of 48 teams, the largest ever, held simultaneously in 3 countries with 104 matches (an increase of 40 matches compared to the 2022 World Cup) to find a champion.

If you are a soccer fan, you probably won't be able to miss this tournament. In particular, this will be the last World Cup of a golden generation, including players considered the best in history, such as Lionel Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo, Neymar, Luka Modric, Kevin De Bruyne... making football fans want to follow every ball rolling on the fields of the host countries America, Mexico and Canada.

But how can you track the match schedule in detail, automatically update the rankings of the tables after each round ends, track the list of teams entering the knockout round... quickly?

To follow the detailed match schedule of the World Cup 2026 on your computer, you can ask for help from the smart match schedule, built with Excel software.

Download the free match schedule here. Because this tool is built with Excel, your computer needs to install Excel software version 2007 or later.

After downloading and activating the file world_cup_2026_v1.3.xlsx, the file's contents will be opened with Excel software on the computer.

In case you are using Office 365 on your computer, this office software suite will open Office files (Word and Excel) downloaded from the Internet in protected mode, meaning users can only view the content of these files without being allowed to edit. This feature helps prevent the risk of users accidentally activating files containing malicious code downloaded from the Internet.

If you are using Office 365, after opening the 2026 World Cup match schedule file mentioned above, click the "Allow editing" button on the Excel software toolbar to be able to edit the content of the match schedule you just downloaded.

The smart match schedule will contain all information about the groups as well as the time of the matches. The default language of this calendar is English and the default time zone used is GMT (while Vietnam's time zone is GMT +7), so the first thing users need to do is change the settings of this calendar.

To do this, click on sheet "..." in the toolbar below.

In the interface that appears next, select "Vietnamese" in the "Language" section, select "Summer Time" (summer time) and select "GMT-Time" and select "GMT +7".

So you have completed the necessary setup steps for the smart match schedule of the 2026 World Cup. Click on the "2026 World Cup" sheet, you will see the names of the teams have been converted into Vietnamese and the match schedule is displayed in the correct time zone of Vietnam.

Every time a match ends, you enter the results of that match into the scoreboard, and the ranking order of the groups will automatically be updated based on the results you provide.

After finishing the matches in the group stage, the teams that have qualified for the next round will automatically be updated in the boxes in the qualifying round, and so on until the final results are updated to find the final winning team.

Notably, this is the first time the World Cup has selected the 8 teams ranked third in the groups with the best records to enter the knockout round. Therefore, this smart match schedule will also automatically arrange the rankings of the third-ranked teams in the groups, based on which users can clearly know which third-ranked team will enter the knockout round.

Note: This match schedule is essentially an Excel file, so after updating the match results, users need to press the key combination "Ctrl - S" to save the content of the file.