Craig Pickering

The away game: beating travel fatigue at the FIFA World Cup

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Having looked at the influence of heat and altitude on performance at the 2026 World Cup, and what can be done about it, I’ll now turn my attention to the next topic in my World Cup preparation series. This is something that affects many of us in today’s world: travel, jet lag, and travel fatigue. 

Understanding travel fatigue, jet lag, and the impact of travel

The 2026 FIFA World Cup will be held across three countries (the USA, Canada, and Mexico) and 16 cities. Australia, for example, play their first game in Vancouver; a mere 14 and a half hour flight from Sydney for their Australian-based players (or close to 10 hours for their European players). This is a big journey, and induces something called travel fatigue, which is different from jet lag. Travel fatigue primarily comes from sleep loss (early morning travel to the airport, late arrival, overnight flight) and dehydration from the flight. It can typically resolve after a good nights sleep, and maybe an easy arrival day. The problem for players at the World Cup, however, is that most teams don’t play all their matches in one city. Australia, after playing in Vancouver, then play in Seattle six days later, and finally Santa Clara six days after that. If they make the knockout stages, their next game could be outside Boston, on the East Coast, a 5-hour flight from Santa Clara. As a result, players will be repeatedly exposed to travel, and hence travel fatigue, during the tournament. Whilst there isn’t a ton of evidence from football, research from the NBA suggests that frequent travel, including across time zone, harms match performance.

Alongside the risk of travel fatigue is that of jet lag, which occurs when an individual’s biological clock doesn’t match the environment due to crossing time zones—typically three or more. Vancouver, for example, is 17 hours behind Sydney – creating significant jet lag for Australian-based players ahead of their first game. There is a three-hour time difference between West and East Coast USA, so if Australia progress, their players may experience further jetlag mid-tournament.

Jet lag and travel fatigue aside, frequent travel also increases the risk of illness, both due to the fatigue that occurs, but also exposure to large numbers of people in confined spaces.  

Mitigating the impact of travel

So what can teams do? To limit travel fatigue, players should be encouraged to nap on the plane, and utilise eye masks and ear plugs to sleep as effectively as possible. Maintaining hydration and optimal nutrition is also important, as is avoiding alcohol and caffeine during travel. The evidence suggests athletes should target approximately 250–500ml of fluid per hour of flight — significantly more than most people consume passively — with electrolyte supplementation recommended on flights exceeding four hours to offset sodium losses. Caffeine, whilst commonly used to manage alertness during travel, should be used strategically: avoided in the 6–8 hours before intended sleep windows, but potentially useful upon arrival to help shift alertness toward local time.

In terms of nutrition, the research supports maintaining regular carbohydrate intake during travel to support immune function, which is transiently suppressed by both the physiological stress of flight and sleep disruption. Practically, this means athletes should eat to a schedule rather than appetite, since hunger cues are often blunted during long-haul travel. The use of compression socks may also mitigate some of the effects of long-term travel – in at least one study they have been shown to support subjective wellbeing of elite athletes during travel. 

Teams can also choose to arrive at the tournament well before their games start. Typically, players require 1 day per time zone crossed to adjust (when travelling east), although this may be closer to half a day per time zone when travelling west. This is likely to be easier said than done, given the closeness of the World Cup to the end of the European football season. To overcome this, players can adjust their sleep and wake times by a couple of hours towards the destination time prior to travel, in order to get some level of “pre-adaptation.”

Upon arrival, training in the first few days should be focused on recovery, supporting acclimation and time shift. Other potential interventions include modifying the time of light exposure to drive adaption (you can read more about this here), rapidly getting onto local time through the structured use of zeitgebers (environmental cues that reset the body’s internal clock, such as light exposure, meal timing, and exercise), and then the use of structured recovery modalities to alleviate travel fatigue. 

Final thoughts

I live and work in Australia, which is obviously a long way away from the places where track and field competitions are usually held. As a result, we are well used to having to travel long distances and mitigate travel fatigue and jet lag. We’ve learned that the simple things work really well: try to sleep as much as practical on the plane and move around as much as possible, wear compression socks, etc. Once we arrive at a location, we have an easy first couple of days with a focus on recovery techniques, pushing higher intensity sessions to the end of the first week we arrive. However, it is easy to get wrong – which will be a big risk to athletes at the upcoming World Cup. 

Additional resources

If you’re interested in reading more about jet lag and travel fatigue in athletes, I’d recommend the following papers: