The Unanswered Question · World Cup 2026

Did teams pick the
right base camp?

FIFA offered 64 approved facilities across North America. Using probability-weighted travel across all possible tournament paths, we calculated the optimal base camp for each team from the actual pool of locations chosen — and found some teams left tens of thousands of kilometres on the table.

Sort by
Team
Actual base chosen
Optimal base
Actual exp.
Optimal exp.
Wasted
Methodology: For each team, expected travel was recalculated placing them at every other team's confirmed base camp. The optimal base is whichever FIFA-approved facility minimises probability-weighted travel across all group fixtures and knockout bracket paths. "Wasted" = expected distance from actual base minus expected from optimal base. Teams already at their optimal location shown at reduced opacity. Distances are great-circle, doubled for each return trip to base.