Major Sports Events 2026–2028: Dates, Hosts, and the eSIM Each Trip Needs

The next two years of sport are unusually spread out. Between now and the closing ceremony in Los Angeles in August 2028 there are eleven events big enough to move hundreds of thousands of travellers, and four of them are hosted by more than one country. That last detail is the one that catches people out at the airport, because the plan that worked in Glasgow stops working in Dublin.

This is the calendar with the connectivity part filled in: organiser-confirmed dates, which countries you actually cross, and what a phone costs to run on each trip. Every date below links to the body that published it, and we have flagged the two events where the schedule is still only a window rather than a fixture list.

The calendar

Chronological, next first. Dates are as published by the organiser; the two marked window have a confirmed period but no full schedule yet.

The LA28 Paralympic Games follow from 15 to 27 August 2028, which makes the summer of 2028 a six-week window in southern California rather than a two-week one.

Three shapes of trip, and only three

Strip away the sport and every event trip is one of three problems.

One country, one eSIM. Aichi-Nagoya, Brazil 2027, Australia 2027, Beijing 2027, LA28. Nothing clever required, buy one plan and size it for the whole stay. The mistake here is not coverage, it's under-buying. People book a 5 GB plan out of habit and then spend six weeks in Australia.

Co-hosted, one eSIM per border. AFCON 2027 and the 2027 Cricket World Cup fall here. Each country needs its own profile, installed before you leave. Your phone will hold all of them; you change which one carries data in settings when you land.

Following a circuit. Formula 1, and to a lesser extent anyone chasing a team through a knockout draw. You are buying a new plan every couple of weeks, so the useful habit is installing the next one while you are still in the current country and still on hotel Wi-Fi.

EURO 2028: the border people forget

EURO 2028 runs from 9 June to 9 July 2028 across nine stadiums in eight cities. The opening match is at the National Stadium of Wales in Cardiff and the final at Wembley, with Manchester, Liverpool, Newcastle, Birmingham, Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, Hampden Park in Glasgow and the Dublin Arena in between.

Eight of those cities are in the United Kingdom. One, Dublin, is in the Republic of Ireland, which is a different country with a different mobile market. A UK eSIM does not work there. Neither does a UK carrier's domestic allowance, unless your particular tariff includes Ireland, which many British tariffs quietly stopped doing.

The fix is the Europe+ regional plan, which covers 35 countries on a single profile and includes both the UK and Ireland. It also happens to be free of the usual regional-plan premium:

At 20 GB for a month, covering both countries costs exactly what covering one of them costs. If your itinerary has any chance of a Dublin fixture, there is no argument for the single-country plan.

One thing Europe+ does not do is stretch to Türkiye, which is sold as a country plan only. That matters less for EURO 2028 than it does for people assuming "Europe" means the whole continent.

AFCON 2027: three countries, and the honest bit about price

The Africa Cup of Nations moves to East Africa for the first time in 2027, opening on Saturday 19 June and finishing with the final on Saturday 17 July. Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda share hosting, the first three-nation AFCON, and all three qualify automatically, which means a realistic chance of following one team across all three.

Three countries, three eSIMs. There is no East African regional plan on our catalogue and we would rather say that plainly than sell you something that half-works.

Be ready for the price, too. East African mobile data costs more at wholesale than European or Japanese data, and that shows up in what we can charge: the entry Kenya plan is $9.99 for 1 GB, and 10 GB over 30 days runs $57.99, against $16.99 for the same shape of plan in the UK. That is not a markup, it is the underlying market. If your trip is one match rather than a tournament, buy small and top up.

The 2027 Cricket World Cup, and where our coverage stops

The ICC's 14-team ODI World Cup returns to Africa for the first time since 2003, played across twelve venues in South Africa, Zimbabwe and Namibia in October and November 2027. The ICC has confirmed the venues and the hosts; the full match schedule is not out yet, so treat any date more precise than "October to November" with suspicion for now.

Here is the part a sales page would leave out. We sell a South Africa plan, and South Africa hosts most of the cricket, the ICC's venue list has eight South African grounds against three in Zimbabwe and one in Namibia. We do not sell eSIMs for Zimbabwe or Namibia at all. If your itinerary includes Harare Sports Club or the ground in Windhoek, you will need a local SIM bought on arrival or your own carrier's roaming for those days, and you should price that in before you book.

Following the 2026 F1 season to the end

Twelve rounds remain in the 2026 season, from Zandvoort on 23 August to Abu Dhabi on 6 December. In order: the Netherlands, Italy, Spain, Azerbaijan, Malaysia, Singapore, the United States, Mexico, Brazil, the United States again for Las Vegas, Qatar and the UAE.

Two useful groupings hide in that list.

Zandvoort, Monza and Madrid are three consecutive rounds inside three weeks, and all three countries are in Europe+. One regional plan covers the whole European swing, and Baku, two weeks later, does not qualify: Azerbaijan is sold as a country plan, not part of Europe+.

Sepang and Marina Bay are back-to-back the following month, and Malaysia and Singapore are both in the Asia+ regional plan. Asia+ at 10 GB for 30 days is $22.99, which comfortably covers a fortnight spanning two race weekends.

Our per-circuit guides go into the ground-level detail, where the signal actually degrades, what a race weekend costs in data, which plan fits, and the F1 2026 hub carries live standings alongside them.

How much data you actually need

These are the sizes people land on in practice, not theoretical minimums.

Two things move you up a tier faster than anything else. Streaming matches on your phone rather than watching them in front of you is the obvious one. The less obvious one is photo and video backup: a phone set to sync every clip to the cloud over mobile data can burn several gigabytes in an afternoon at a stadium without you touching it. Turn cloud backup to Wi-Fi-only before you fly.

If you do choose an unlimited plan, note that all three tiers throttle rather than cut off, and the daily allowance differs: Unlimited LITE gives 2 GB a day, STANDARD 3 GB, MAX 5 GB, each dropping to 1 Mbps after that. One Mbps still carries maps and messaging perfectly well; it does not carry HD video.

Before you fly: the five-minute version

1. Confirm each host country is in the catalogue. Especially for co-hosted tournaments.
2. Buy at home and install over Wi-Fi. You get an email when the QR code is ready, then you install from the website. The data line does not start until you connect at the destination.
3. Keep your home SIM in the phone, with data roaming off. Calls, texts and two-factor codes keep working on your normal number; the eSIM carries the data. Ticket apps and banking apps both want those codes.
4. Set cloud backup to Wi-Fi-only. See above.
5. Screenshot your ticket and your accommodation address. Inside a full stadium, no network, local, roaming, or otherwise, is reliable. Anything you need to show at a gate should already be on the device.

What this guide does not tell you

We sell travel eSIMs, so read this as a connectivity guide from a connectivity company rather than a neutral survey.

We have not tested network speed inside any of these stadiums, and we would not trust anyone who claimed to have. A packed 70,000-seat bowl is the hardest radio environment in consumer telecoms, and whether a given cell holds up depends on which carrier the host stadium has upgraded, where you are sitting, and how many other people are uploading at that exact second. A local eSIM removes the roaming bill and the SIM-swap hassle. It does not repeal physics.

Nor is this ticketing, visa or travel advice. Several events on this calendar have entry requirements tied to match tickets, and those change; check with the organiser and the destination's own immigration service.