At this summer’s FIFA World Cup, cooling breaks have become a visible part of the game.

Depending on who you ask, they are seen either as a player welfare measure to address heat stress concerns, or as a brazen new source of advertising revenue for the host nations. Either way, the mandatory pauses reflect a growing challenge for elite sport: how to protect athletes as tournaments are played in increasingly demanding climatic conditions.

With matches played across enclosed, air-conditioned venues as well as open-air stadiums, some have questioned whether this blanket approach reflects the conditions on the pitch, or simply provides consistency across the tournament.

As engineers, a different question emerges: should we be relying on cooling breaks to manage heat? Or wouldn’t we be better off designing environments where those conditions are less likely to occur in the first place?

Understanding heat stress in elite sport

In professional football, heat stress is not measured by air temperature alone. The benchmark adopted by FIFA is Wet Bulb Globe Temperature (WBGT), a metric that combines temperature, humidity, solar radiation and air movement to provide a more accurate assessment of how the body experiences heat during physical exertion.

Guidance from organisations such as FIFPRO suggests cooling breaks should be introduced when WBGT exceeds 26°C, while more severe conditions may require matches to be delayed or postponed. These thresholds reflect an understanding in the sport that heat affects not only comfort, but also performance, fatigue and, in extreme cases, player safety.

Cooling breaks can play an important role in reducing heat strain and supporting player welfare. But they remain a reactive measure – an intervention introduced once conditions have already reached a critical threshold.

For designers and engineers, the focus is on addressing those conditions before they arise.

What Qatar 2022 taught us about designing for heat

For Hilson Moran, these questions are not theoretical. They were central to the design of venues delivered for the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022.

At the time, FIFA’s design brief required all World Cup stadiums to operate with open roofs, with the tournament itself initially planned for its traditional June/July schedule. Early climate analysis undertaken by Hilson Moran demonstrated that exposing players and spectators to the Qatari summer sun, even within cooled stadium environments, made it extremely difficult to maintain safe thermal conditions. This work helped inform the decision to move the tournament from its traditional summer slot to the cooler winter months.

While the design and technologies deployed across these projects attracted significant attention, the most valuable outcomes were the lessons they provided about how stadiums perform in extreme environmental conditions.

Lesson 1: Climate must shape the brief

The Qatar experience demonstrated that environmental conditions cannot be engineered away in isolation. Understanding climate at the earliest stages of a project is critical to defining the right design strategy and, in some cases, challenging fundamental assumptions about how a venue or event should operate.

The decision to move the tournament to winter was a clear example of this principle in action. By reducing the environmental challenge at source, it became possible to explore a wider range of design solutions that balanced player welfare, spectator comfort and energy performance. With rising temperatures across the globe, we could see this shift in tournament timing take place again, sooner rather than later.

Lesson 2: Passive design can be incredibly powerful

The move to a winter tournament opened up opportunities to maximise passive environmental design strategies.

A notable example was Stadium 974. Positioned on Doha’s waterfront, the stadium was able to take advantage of cooler coastal conditions and prevailing sea breezes. Combined with the natural ventilation opportunities created by its modular container-based construction, the design demonstrated how stadium form and location can significantly reduce cooling demand while maintaining comfortable conditions for players and spectators.

The project reinforced a key principle that remains relevant today: the most sustainable cooling strategy is often reducing the need for cooling in the first place.

Lesson 3: Active systems work best when supported by design

Away from the cooling benefits of the coast, Lusail Stadium, host venue for the World Cup Final, required active cooling to maintain player safety and spectator comfort.

The challenge was to deliver FIFA and Qatari design requirements in the most efficient way possible. This was achieved by supplying cooled air through the seating bowl, creating a cascade of conditioned air that flowed across occupied areas and the pitch. Rather than cooling the entire stadium volume, the system focused on the spaces where people were located, helping to reduce energy demand.

To ensure the system operated effectively, extensive computational modelling was undertaken to understand how wind would interact with the stadium and how cooled air could be retained within the bowl. Simulations were carried out across a range of climatic conditions, including high temperatures, strong winds and elevated humidity levels. In each scenario, the design demonstrated that WBGT could be maintained within the required limits for player and spectator comfort.

The key lesson was that effective cooling is not simply about adding mechanical systems. It depends on integrating architecture, airflow and environmental engineering into a single design strategy.

Why venue design matters more than weather forecasts

Those lessons are becoming increasingly relevant. Across the FIFA World Cup 2026, matches are being played across a vast geographic area – from enclosed venues with controlled internal environments to open-air stadiums exposed to high solar loads, humidity and varying wind conditions. Even within a single stadium, environmental conditions can differ significantly depending on shading, surface temperatures and local airflow patterns.

As a result, two venues experiencing similar weather conditions may present very different levels of thermal stress for players.

This is why it’s so crucial for thermal comfort in stadiums to be assessed through performance-based metrics such as WBGT, rather than ambient air temperature alone. Maintaining acceptable WBGT levels requires a detailed understanding of how architecture, engineering systems and local climate interact to influence the conditions on the pitch.

Cooling breaks as a safety net, not a solution

Cooling breaks, therefore, begin to look less like a solution and more like a safety net.

As climate change continues to reshape the environmental conditions in which sport is played, stadium performance will become an increasingly important part of player welfare.

Operational measures such as cooling breaks will remain an important safeguard. But they should not be viewed as the primary solution.

The long-term challenge for designers, engineers and tournament organisers is to create venues that actively mitigate heat stress through intelligent design, environmental modelling and integrated building systems.

Designing stadiums for a hotter future

This summer’s World Cup highlights a challenge that extends far beyond a single tournament. As sporting events are hosted in increasingly diverse and demanding climates, the focus must shift from reacting to heat stress to managing it through design.

Our experience designing stadiums for the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 demonstrated the value of considering thermal comfort from the earliest stages of design. Through the careful integration of architecture, environmental engineering and performance modelling, stadiums can be designed to create safer and more comfortable conditions for players and spectators alike.

Cooling breaks may remain an important safeguard. But the greater opportunity lies in designing venues that help reduce heat stress at source, creating more resilient environments for the future of sport.