FIFA wants tournament-specific video review powers next summer. The World Cup as live experiment.
FIFA plans to let VAR rule on corner kicks and second yellow cards at the 2026 World Cup, which is not great news for fans who already think the game stops too much. IFAB is expected to approve the changes on a trial basis, so the tournament across the US, Mexico, and Canada would run under its own version of the Laws of the Game.
VAR would be able to step in when a corner is awarded to check whether the ball crossed the line and who touched it last. They’d also get to review second yellows, which right now are untouchable even though they send a player off just like a straight red. That gap has never made sense.
These powers wouldn’t automatically carry into domestic leagues. The Premier League and UEFA club tournaments will probably stick with the existing four review categories for now. But this turns the 2026 World Cup into a product test, and if it looks good in front of billions of viewers, national associations won’t hold out long.
The World Cup as football’s testing ground
This isn’t new for FIFA. They tested goal-line technology in Brazil, rolled out VAR in Russia, then added semi-automated offside and tracking chips in Qatar. Each World Cup becomes the proving ground for whatever they want to try next.
It works because the World Cup is the only competition FIFA runs completely. They control the cameras, the balls, the refs. A trial that succeeds gives them stats to point at. One that fails just quietly disappears after the final, and nobody in Zurich gets asked about it.
Domestic leagues are a different story. Most of them can’t get through a weekend without some VAR controversy—offsides by a toenail, handball debates, refs standing around for minutes before anyone explains what’s happening. UEFA doesn’t want corner reviews added because it means more stoppages. Club executives don’t want more complexity layered onto a system that fans already complain about constantly.
You can feel it in any match thread. People joke that watching 90 minutes now feels like watching the NFL. Refs spend half their time pointing at monitors. By 2025, a lot of fans don’t just dislike VAR—they’re actively bitter about it. The game used to flow and now it doesn’t, and the tradeoff hasn’t been worth it.
That said, corner calls are factual. Ball goes out or it doesn’t. Someone touches it last. Those should be easy to get right if the decision comes before the kick. Second yellows can flip a knockout match just like a straight red but somehow sit outside replay.
There are old grudges here. Spain got knocked out by South Korea in 2002 after Fernando Morientes had a golden goal disallowed because the ball supposedly crossed the line before the cross. That clip shows up in every “worst refereeing decisions” video on YouTube. English managers have screamed about goals from corners that replays showed were goal kicks. With 104 matches on the schedule, it’s getting harder to argue those calls should just be left alone.
World Cup 2026 is already going to be a mess logistically. Three countries, sixteen cities, games in 100-degree heat, TV schedules that don’t care about player welfare. North America was always going to push everyone to the limit. Throwing a VAR experiment on top of that is a choice.
The World Cup keeps becoming its own thing. Extra subs, extra teams, a VAR rulebook that doesn’t apply anywhere else. Every cycle piles on more. 2026 is when the biggest stage admits it’s a laboratory.
If corner and second-yellow reviews go well, domestic leagues will face pressure to adopt them. If they cause confusion and delays, the critics who want VAR rolled back get more ammunition. Either way, what happens next summer is going to matter.
