World Cup 2026 licensing order: what the new pub opening hours mean across England and Wales

What the Home Office has actually decided

On 13 April 2026 the Home Office published the outcome of its consultation on relaxing pub licensing hours for the men’s FIFA World Cup. The result is a contingent licensing hours order that will permit pubs and restaurants in England and Wales to stay open longer on match days, but only when a qualifying home nation is playing, and only for matches that kick off within a specified evening window.

The operative numbers are simple. For matches kicking off between 5pm and 9pm, licensed premises can stay open until 1am the following morning. For matches kicking off after 9pm up to 10pm, the extension runs until 2am. Matches kicking off before 5pm or after 10pm get no national extension at all. Venues that want to cover those games need to apply for their own Temporary Event Notice.

What makes this order unusual is the set of rounds it covers. The original consultation, which ran from December 2025 to January 2026, proposed an extension only for the semi-finals and the final. The final order is substantially broader. It applies to the round of 32, the round of 16, the quarter-finals, the semi-finals, the bronze medal match, and the final. The Home Office says the widening came after the original consultation responses, and two further targeted consultations, showed appetite for a longer extension.

Which home nations trigger the extension

The order is contingent, meaning it only activates when a qualifying home nation is playing in a match that otherwise meets the kick-off criteria. The Home Office names England and Scotland as those nations for this tournament. If neither is playing in a given round, the national extension does not apply for that round, and pubs revert to their ordinary licence terms.

This matters for anyone planning a night out around a specific fixture. A round of 16 match between, say, two South American teams that happens to kick off at 9.30pm will not trigger the national extension, even though it is exactly the sort of match the neutral viewer might want to watch in a pub. The order is designed to allow communities to support the sides that carry a UK following; it is not a blanket tournament-long relaxation.

The order also does not apply in Scotland and Northern Ireland at all, regardless of which team is playing. Licensing in those jurisdictions is separate, and any equivalent extension would need to come from Scottish or Northern Irish authorities. A Scottish fan watching Scotland play from a pub in Edinburgh is therefore under different rules to one watching from a pub in Newcastle.

The consultation and why the extension is wider than proposed

The original consultation received 38 complete responses. That is a small number by Home Office standards, but these consultations typically draw responses from licensed-trade trade bodies, residents’ groups, local authorities and police forces — the people most directly affected by licensing variations — rather than the general public.

Of those 38 respondents, 28 (73.68%) agreed with the government’s proposal to extend licensing hours for the semi-finals and final. Ten (26.32%) were opposed, citing concerns about crime, disorder and disturbance typically raised whenever licensing hours are relaxed for any event. The final question was open-ended and allowed respondents to argue either that the proposal did not go far enough or that it went too far. A small majority of those who answered wanted a wider extension, with several explicitly asking for the quarter-finals to be included.

The expansion to six full rounds reflects that finding, combined with the two targeted follow-up consultations the Home Office then carried out. This is a meaningful choice. Licensing extensions of this scope are usually constrained to a single match or a final; covering the knockout phase from the round of 32 onwards is unusual and, from a licensed-trade perspective, commercially significant.

How the three ways of extending pub hours fit together

Getting the right to open a pub later in England and Wales normally runs through one of three routes. The World Cup order sits in the first category. Understanding where each route fits helps explain what is and is not covered by the April announcement.

• National licensing hours order. Made by the Home Secretary under section 172 of the Licensing Act 2003, and used for occasions of exceptional international, national or local significance — previous examples include royal weddings, the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee and earlier World Cup and Euro finals. The order applies automatically to all premises that already hold a qualifying licence. The World Cup 2026 order is of this type.
• Temporary Event Notice (TEN). A notice submitted by an individual venue to its local council, usually at least ten working days in advance, to vary its hours for a specific event. TENs are per-venue and capped at a maximum number per premises per year. A pub that wants to open late for a quarter-final involving a non-home-nation team, or for a group stage match, would use a TEN.
• Premises licence variation. A full licence variation goes to the licensing authority, involves a 28-day consultation, and can be challenged by neighbours, police and environmental health. This is the route for permanent changes to a venue’s operating hours, not one-off events.

The practical consequence is that venues wanting to cover every World Cup match — including early kick-offs before 5pm, late kick-offs after 10pm, group stage games, or matches that don’t involve England or Scotland — will need to file TENs for those specific games on top of the national order. Most will not bother. A few will.

Source: Home Office, Contingent relaxation of licensing hours during the semi-final and final of the FIFA Men’s Football World Cup 2026: consultation outcome, April 2026.

What this means if you have just moved to the UK

For people relocating to England or Wales from abroad, this order is worth understanding in context, because UK licensing law is not what many new arrivals assume. There is no national closing time like some European cities have; instead every premises has its own licence setting out when it can sell alcohol, and the default for many high street pubs is 11pm, with 10.30pm last orders. A significant minority — city-centre bars, late-night venues, some Wetherspoons sites — already hold licences to 1am or 2am and are not directly affected by the order.

The order matters most to the classic neighbourhood pub. If you are watching a quarter-final involving England that kicks off at 9pm in your local, and the local would ordinarily close at 11pm, the extension means you could in principle stay until 2am without the venue needing to do anything extra. Whether it actually stays open is the landlord’s call, subject to existing licence conditions, staffing, and any noise agreements with residents nearby. Many will extend; some will not.

Two other quirks of UK licensing are worth knowing if you are newly arrived. Sunday trading laws do not change the licensing hours picture the way they change retail opening for large shops, but some premises have Sunday-specific conditions on their licence, so a pub’s normal Sunday close time may be earlier than its weekday equivalent even without a World Cup order in play. And off-sales — buying alcohol to take home from a supermarket or off-licence — follow a completely separate regime under each premises’ retail licence, typically aligned to local shop opening hours and untouched by anything in the Home Office order.

Scotland and Northern Ireland — a separate picture

Licensing law is devolved in Scotland and operates entirely separately in Northern Ireland. The Home Office order does not apply in either jurisdiction, and it will not be extended to them retrospectively. In Scotland, the Licensing (Scotland) Act 2005 governs opening hours and any change would need to come from the Scottish Government, with licensing decisions sitting with the 32 local Licensing Boards.

This creates an interesting mismatch. Scotland is one of the qualifying home nations that triggers the England and Wales extension. If Scotland reach a quarter-final, the extension activates for pubs in Newcastle and Cardiff, but not for pubs in Glasgow or Edinburgh — unless Scottish Ministers make a separate order. Scottish readers who want confirmation should check whether any parallel Scottish announcement has been made before planning a late night.

Northern Ireland is covered by its own framework under the Licensing (Northern Ireland) Order 1996. Extended licensing for major events in Northern Ireland typically runs through the Department for Communities and, again, would be a separate decision.

What to expect over the tournament

The men’s World Cup 2026 runs from June to July across the United States, Canada and Mexico, with kick-off times in the UK determined by the host venues’ time zones. Several knockout matches are likely to fall neatly inside the 5pm–10pm UK window that the Home Office order targets, although a substantial number will kick off earlier in the afternoon UK time or later at night. That will determine how often the order actually activates in practice.

The broader point for readers newly in England or Wales is that this is one of the very few nights of the year when UK pub hours are collectively relaxed by national order. It is a small but culturally telling moment. The whole point of the order, as the Home Office put it, is that communities can come together at their local licensed premises to support the home nations. If you walk past your nearest pub on a warm summer evening while England or Scotland are playing in the knockouts, you are looking at the thing the government designed the order for.

For anyone trying to plan around a specific match — whether as a fan, a venue operator, a resident, or a new arrival trying to figure out where to watch — the safest approach is to check the kick-off time against the windows set out above, confirm the venue’s intention to extend rather than assuming it will, and be aware that group stage matches and early kick-offs fall outside the order altogether. The exceptions are as informative as the rule.