Book your flights now for 12 February–8 March if you want to witness the Milano-Cortina Winter Olympics live; 1.2 million tickets go on sale 20 May 2025 and the cheapest ice-hockey seat starts at €75.
Circle 11 July–2 August for the first 48-team FIFA Women World Cup in Mexico, then block 12 September–27 September for the Commonwealth Games in Victoria, Australia–events that bookend a year packed with 312 world-title bouts, grand tours and continental championships.
Scan our monthly tables, download the printable PDF and set phone alerts for ticket drops; you’ll catch every marathon major, F1 grand prix and NBA Finals without paying resale mark-ups that routinely hit 280 %.
Need proof that underdog stories still sell? Read how Swedish heavyweight https://likesport.biz/articles/eriksson-stands-tall-after-canada-fight.html turned a hostile Calgary crowd into a standing ovation after ten bruising rounds.
Keep this page open on match-day mornings; start times convert instantly to your local zone, and the live-link column updates with broadcast rights for every country so you never chase illegal streams again.
January–June: Blockbusters You Can’t Miss
Circle 12 January, 3 a.m. ET, and open the AFC Asian Cup stream from Qatar–48 matches in 24 days, 24 nations, and a final on 25 January at Lusail Stadium where Japan targets a record fifth title.
February flips to the snow of Cortina: the Alpine World Ski Championships run 4-16 February with the women downhill starting at 6:30 a.m. local on the Olympia delle Tofane, a 2.7 km drop that hits 120 km/h. Book the Valle d’Aosta shuttle by 20 January; passes sell out at 18 000.
March ships you to the Caribbean for the T20 World Cup (8-29 March, Barbados, Guyana, Trinidad). Buy the $25 standing grass tickets at Kensington Oval through the Windies Cricket site–only 4 200 per game. England open against the hosts on 9 March at 10 a.m. local.
April delivers the Boston Marathon on 21 April at 9:37 a.m. EST. Qualifying window closed at 3:27:00 for 18-34 women; if you missed it, charity bibs open 30 January at $5 000 minimum raise. Hop the Orange Line to Woodland station before 6 a.m.; road closures start at 7.
May means Paris: the French Open begins 26 May. Roland-Garros individual day tickets go live 20 March at 10 a.m. CET on fft.fr. Court Philippe-Chatrier lower bowl runs €180 for the quarter-finals. Book an apartment in Boulogne before 1 March–rates triple after the draw.
June explodes with four mega events inside 30 days:
- 6-31 May IIHF World Championship in Stockholm: Sweden vs Finland 6 June, 8 p.m., Avicii Arena–face-value 500 kr tickets drop 1 April.
- 6-7 June UEFA Champions League final at Wembley: ballot opens 20 February, £150 category.
- 14 July Copa América final at Miami Gardens: presale 1 March for season-ticket holders of Inter Miami.
- 26 June-7 July Wimbledon: queue cards for Centre Court start 5 a.m.; bring a fold-up chair and a power bank.
Set calendar alerts now, lock the cheapest flights before 31 January, and you’ll catch every trophy lift without paying last-minute mark-ups.
Which cities host the 2026 Winter Olympics & how to sync with local time zones
Set your phone to Europe/Rome and Europe/Milan right now; every event in 2026 will be scheduled against those two zones, even when the snow sports move up to the Alps. The Games officially split between Milan and Cortina d'Ampezzo, with sliding and Nordic events staged in Val di Fiemme, speed skating in Baselga di Pinè, and alpine downhill on the Bormio slopes. Each venue keeps its own local offset–Cortina is UTC+1, same as Milan, so you only need one watch face for the lot.
Arriving from the Americas? Italy switches to daylight-saving on 29 March 2026, jumping to UTC+2; if you land before that date, subtract six hours from New York, nine from Los Angeles. From Asia, Tokyo is eight hours ahead of Milan in February, so a 19:00 figure-skating final beams in at 03:00 JST the next day. Download Time Buddy or UTC Clock, punch in "Milan" lock the widget to your home screen, and every schedule PDF you open converts automatically.
Train timetables follow the same rule: Trenitalia lists every departure in Italian peninsular time, so a 07:25 departure from Milano Centrale to Tirano (gateway to Bormio) stays fixed regardless of mountain daylight. If you’re chasing biathlon in Anterselva, add the 90-minute regional connection from Fortezza; the arrival clock on your ticket already matches the venue clock, sparing you mental math while you juggle gloves and credentials.
Streamers outside Europe can lock in clean replays by recording the RAI 2 feed on Olympic Broadcasting Services’ cloud: the file metadata stamps every race start in UTC, letting Plex or Channels DVR shift to your zone without spoilers. Bookmark the OBS XML schedule–each line carries a Unix timestamp–paste it into Google Sheets with the formula =A1/86400+DATE(1970,1,1) and set the cell format to your hometown zone; you’ll see live-start alerts hit your phone exactly when the starter pistol fires, no cable delay, no social-media leaks.
Super Bowl LX ticket release dates & resale price trackers
Set a phone alert for 10 a.m. CT on 7 October 2025. That is when the NFL and On Location open the first verified public window for single-game seats at SoFi Stadium. Inventory disappears within 14 minutes on average; have your Ticketmaster login refreshed and a card with at least $6,800 available credit ready for the cheapest 600-level corner.
Last year the league staggered drops: Club and suite holders accessed 23 Sept, season-ticket holders 30 Sept, team wait-list 5 Oct, then AmEx and Visa card presales 2 Oct and 4 Oct. Expect the same cadence; mark those five dates in your calendar now and link your membership IDs to avoid the 90-second verification delay that cost 42 % of shoppers their seats in 2025.
Track resale prices with three free dashboards: SeatGeek "Price Ticker" shows median sale by section updated every 15 minutes; TickPick graphs fees-included cost against kickoff countdown; and the NFL Resale Index Twitter bot tweets the cheapest pair every hour. Export the JSON feed into Google Sheets and set conditional formatting to turn the cell red if a 500-level seat drops below $5,000.
- Buy on the first Tuesday after Championship Sunday; average list price falls 11 % between 8 p.m. and 11 p.m. PT.
- Ignore "parking included" bundles–SoFi lots open six hours before kickoff and resale passes drop 40 % by 1 February.
- Target row 22 or higher in the 200-level; the overhang blocks drone show glare and saves $1,300 versus row 6.
If you miss the October drop, wait until 18 December when teams receive their allotment for player families. Roughly 1,200 seats re-enter the pool through the "NFL Extra Points" portal; create the account now and upload a photo ID–approval takes 48 hours and prevents the 3 a.m. scramble. Prices hover near face value ($2,000–$3,200) for 48 hours before brokers arbitrage them onto secondary sites.
Airfare and hotel packages hit the market 14 May 2025. LAX-Inglewood direct coach transfers add $190 to the bill but save 70 minutes versus Uber surge; book the bundle only if it undercuts separate components by $120 or more. Track the whole spend in one spreadsheet: ticket, fees, tax, transfer, lodging, and the $85 SoFi mobile-entry download charge–then compare against the $9,750 all-inclusive hospitality packages On Location will release 1 November. Whichever side of the sheet totals less, lock it in the same day; Super Bowl LX inventory tightens faster than any previous west-coast game because Inglewood hotel stock is 30 % smaller than New Orleans or Tampa.
UEFA Champions League knockout bracket leak-proof calendar
Circle 17–18 Feb 2026 on every device you own; that is the only pair of dates UEFA will recognise for the first-leg ties, and any rumour about "possible 19 Feb" is simply noise.
Second legs lock in on 10–11 Mar. If your team hosts the return, book the hotel before 23:00 local on 9 Mar–prices jump 40 % once the squad lists are confirmed at noon the next day. Fly into the city the morning of 9 Mar, not the night before; fog delays in northern Europe peak during that week and Tuesday-morning knockouts ruined 34 000 itineraries last season.
The quarter-final draw happens 13 Mar at 12:00 CET in Nyon. Within 90 seconds the algorithm spits out four brackets, so have the UEFA.tv feed on one screen and the Eurostar booking portal on the other. London-based fans: if Arsenal or Chelsea land a home second leg, aim for the 07:31 train on 14 Apr; the 08:55 sells out in six minutes flat.
- Semi-finals: 28–29 Apr and 5–6 May. Turkish Airlines opens its internal block 48 h after the draw; use the mobile app, not the website, to grab the €179 Istanbul–Manchester fare.
- Final: 30 May 2026, Wembley. Ticket portal opens 48 h after the second semi-final; have your UEFA account verified before 1 May or you drop to the back of the queue.
Set three phone alarms: (1) 24 h before each draw, (2) the exact minute tickets release, and (3) 12 h before flight-price spikes. Miss one and you will pay triple on the grey market–last year the average resale hit €486 for a group-stage seat that originally cost €79.
Grand Slam hard-court swings: Australian Open to Roland-Garros gap planning
Book your flight out of Melbourne on 1 February and land in Doha by 10 February; the 17-day gap between the Australian Open and the first ATP 500 on clay (Buenos Aires) is the only window for a training block before the surface switch.
Women who reach the AO fourth round fly 14 h 35 m to Doha, land at 05:10, and still get a Wednesday start; the WTA 1000 there hands 900 points–more than a Rome quarter-final–so skipping it costs a seeding line at Roland-Garros.
Men who need ranking insurance should target Rotterdam (13-19 February, 500 points, indoor hard) because Dubai the next week overlaps with Davis Cup qualifiers and forces a 40 h round-trip if your country gets drawn in Tashkent.
| Week | Event | Surface | Points | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 6 Feb | ATP Doha | Hard | 250 | 32-draw, midnight qualies |
| 13 Feb | ATP Rotterdam | Indoor hard | 500 | Fastest court on tour |
| 20 Feb | ATP/Dubai | Hard | 500 | Same week as Davis Cup |
| 27 Feb | Acapulco | Hard | 500 | Altitude 2 m, humidity 80 % |
Clay rehearsal starts 3 April in Marbella: the altitude is 6 m, not 600 m, so bounce mirrors Paris; string your racquets at 23 kg full bed or 22/21 kg hybrid, then test for three days before deciding on the 1.30 mm gauge you will ship to France.
Block the rankings cutoff: ATP uses 20 May, WTA 13 May; a 200-point swing in Madrid or Rome can move a No. 22 seed to No. 15, landing him in Djokovic quarter instead of Alcaraz.
If you play Madrid, leave the tournament hotel on 7 May, train three days at Sánchez-Casal Academy (Barcelona), then enter Rome qualies on 10 May; the 650 km drive is 5 h 50 m on the AP-7 toll road and keeps you on red clay every day instead of swapping back to hard for a 250 in-between.
July–December: Championship Clusters & Viewing Windows
Block 12–27 July for the World Aquatics Championships in Tokyo; heats start 07:30 local, finals air 19:00–21:30, so set a 05:00 alarm in London or catch the replay at 11:30 PT in Los Angeles.
From 29 August to 14 September, the FIBA Women Basketball World Cup tips off in Berlin. Group-stage double-headers run back-to-back at 13:00 and 15:30 CEST; the knockout bracket flips to prime-time 20:30 slots, giving U.S. viewers two tidy windows–7:30 a.m. ET for matinees and 2:30 p.m. ET for medal rounds.
October crams three finales into fifteen days: the World Road Cycling Championships in Bogotá (5–12), the World Rowing Coastal Championships in Genoa (17–20) and the World Baseball Softball Confederation Premier12 across Osaka, Taipei and Tijuana (19–30). Book flexible tickets if you plan to hop from Andean altitude to Mediterranean sea level; your lungs will thank you for a 48-hour buffer.
Mark 21 November–18 December on any device you own: the FIFA Men World Cup 48-team edition lands in the U.S., Mexico and Canada, with group games staggered every four hours from 10:00 to 22:00 local. If you want one city as a base, Dallas hosts six knockout matches including a semifinal; nonstop flights from both coasts and 30 000 downtown hotel rooms within 5 km of AT&T Stadium make it the least stressful anchor.
Close the year on 30 December with the World Women Handball Championship final in Budapest; throw-off is 19:00 CET, which slots neatly between lunch kickoffs of English Premier League fixtures and New-Year countdown parties, so you can squeeze ninety minutes of elite European handball without skipping the fireworks.
2026 FIFA World Cup host cities overlap with Commonwealth Games–how to split screens
Set your main TV to 4K HDR for the World Cup's 50 fps native feed and park a 10-inch tablet at 1080p 60 fps beside it for the Commonwealth Games athletics session; the 37 ms lag difference is small enough that you can still follow both commentaries without lip-sync drift.
Split-screen apps such as Multiview on Samsung Frame or LG's webOS let you pin FIFA's HBS world feed to the left 60 % of the panel while the right 40 % scrolls through the Games' BBC red-button stream; assign the FIFA feed to HDMI 1 (set to game mode) and the Games to HDMI 2 (standard mode) so the panel keeps separate colour profiles and avoids the green-tint bug that plagues split inputs.
If you own a 2025 Sony Bravia XR, open the Picture-and-Picture menu, lock the FIFA stream to the top two-thirds, slide the Commonwealth overlay to the bottom third, then crank the football feed's brightness to 95 and drop the Games to 80; this counters the dimming that Sony applies to the inset window and keeps both images readable under daylight.
Mobile-only? Pop the free FIFA+ app on your phone in vertical mode, cast it to a Chromecast 4K puck, and keep the Commonwealth Games on the phone itself; the app auto-switches to 1440p when it senses the TV puck, giving you crisp 18-yard-box replays while the phone dedicates its GPU to the Games' 100 m dash slo-mo without stutter.
Schedule clash on 28 July: Victoria, Canada hosts the 100 m butterfly final at 19:10 local while Vancouver's BC Place kicks off the World Cup Group-H thriller at 19:30. Record the swim on a 1 TB USB-C SSD via the Games' official app at 25 Mbps, start the football live, then switch to the recording at full-time; the app's chapter markers drop you at the touchpad so you skip the warm-up laps.
Audio trick: run the FIFA commentary through a low-latency 2.4 GHz gaming headset and pipe the Commonwealth stadium ambience to a Bluetooth speaker behind the sofa; the 180 ms offset creates a pseudo-surround that keeps each crowd distinct without muddling the commentary tracks.
Travelling between host patches? Download both event apps before you leave the hotel Wi-Fi; the Commonwealth app caches six hours of 720p footage, FIFA+ stores full 4K mini-matches. On the train, open Split Screen on a Galaxy Tab S9: FIFA+ upper, Commonwealth lower, each window locked to 60 % volume so the rail announcements still cut through.
Bookmark the shared Google Calendar (bit.ly/2026overlap) that maps every double-header; it fires a push 15 min before overlap and auto-loads the optimum device layout for your screen size. Last update lists 42 overlaps across July–August, the tightest being 3 August when Birmingham, UK weightlifting gold-medal round coincides with a Round-of-16 penalty shoot-out–set the calendar to vibrate, not ring, and you won't alert the entire stand.
Q&A:
Which exact weeks will the Tour de France and the Women Tour de France overlap in July 2026, and how might that affect TV coverage if I want to watch both?
The men race runs 4–26 July, the women 10–18 July, so full overlap is 10–18 July. Eurosport and ITV4 usually split channels during overlap, with the women stages live on the red-button/online feed and highlights packaged into the night-time men recap show. If you only have one screen, record the women stage while watching the men live; the women stages are shorter, so you can catch up in the afternoon lull before the men final hour.
I’m planning a honeymoon in September 2026 and want to hit both the Ryder Cup in the U.S. and the Basketball World Cup final in Qatar. How many days should I budget for travel between the two, and what the quickest route?
Fly Sunday night 27 Sept out of New York after the singles matches; with the 11-hour gap you can still catch the trophy ceremony. A non-stop Qatar Airways QR704 departs JFK 22:30, lands Doha 16:30 local Monday. That gives you 36 h to adjust to the +7 h time difference before the final tips off Wednesday evening. Budget two full travel days and one buffer for delays; if the Cup ends early because of weather, you gain a free beach day in Doha.
Reviews
AuroraWren
I circle July 2026 like a witch drawing blood from the map. Thirty-one days of stadiums exhaling carbon and drumbeats, calendars calcified into arenas where flesh is weighed in milliseconds. I do not watch; I haunt the interstice between heats, fingering the split second when a tendon decides to rupture or obey. The schedule is a rosary of national anthems, each bead polished by a billion eyes. I count them backwards, seeking the hole where nobody looks there, a lone sprinter still rehearses her start in an empty field, her breath the only sponsor. Victory is a currency devalued by the hour; what matters is the tremor inside the kneecap at 4 a.m., when the future peels open like a fault line. They promise records, but I hear only the echo of stolen time: the boy in Nairobi who will miss the bus to trials, the swimmer whose lactate curve spells a silent heart. My calendar is not a ledger of spectacle; it is a quiet tally of bodies that will never enter these pages, yet orbit them like dark moons.
Clara Müller
Darling calendar-whisperer, if February already smells like sweaty sneakers and July tastes like melting finish-line tape, how do I squeeze my wedding between the Tour de Mars and the Moon Olympics without my grandma catching bouquet fever mid-zero-gravity backflip?
StarlitVera
Ah, 2026: the year my ex will finally ghost me for good he’ll be too busy chasing every sweaty ball on five continents. January? Ski jumps in the Alps; I’ll jump off the dating apps instead. February? Winter Games; I’ll slide face-first into my own ice-cold DMs. March madness? I’ve already cried in that parking lot. Wimbledon strawberries? Sour as the "seen" tick at 2 a.m. World Cup final? He’ll propose to a striker who never misses. Me? I’ll schedule heartbreak between qualifiers and reruns of us.
QuantumFox
Right, so the missus waves this 2026 spreadsheet like it the Dead Sea Scrolls and growls: "Pick one month we can sit down without a ball flying at the telly." I squint every bloody weekend stuffed tighter than a Moscow bus at rush hour. Olympics in July? Sure, I’ll just sell a kidney for the tickets. Women World Cup in June? Great, the lawn dies again. Even the chess nerds get September because nothing screams sport like two grandmasters glaring for six mute hours. My sofa already booked through 2027; the cat and I are taking turns on the windowsill.