The 2026 World Cup didn't just capture attention on the pitch – it also appears to have reshaped what people were searching for when it came to their next holiday. An analysis of search interest across all 48 World Cup nations found that, once the tournament got underway, travel-related searches for a number of competing countries shot up compared to the weeks before it started – in some cases by well over 1,000%.
Using 392 travel-related search terms (covering flights, holidays, vacations, best time to visit, and more) tracked for every nation at the tournament, the data compares average search interest during the World Cup period to the same number of days immediately beforehand.
The results point to a clear pattern: several lower-profile footballing nations saw the biggest jumps in holiday-related search interest, suggesting the tournament introduced these destinations to a wider travel audience.
Highlights
- Cape Verde recorded the single biggest jump in the entire dataset. "Cape verde vacation" rose +4,600% during the tournament – the 1st-largest percentage increase in search interest recorded across all 392 terms tracked – with "cheap flights cape verde" not far behind at +4,200%, the 2nd-largest.
- "Czechia holiday" searches surged +3,100%, the 3rd-largest percentage increase in search interest recorded across all terms tracked.
- DR Congo saw a +2,785% jump in flight searches ("dr congo flights"), the 4th-largest percentage increase in search interest overall.
- Haiti's "cheap flights haiti" searches rose +2,400%, the 5th-largest percentage increase in search interest overall, and "haiti vacation" also grew by over 1,000% (+1,038%, the 14th-largest).
- Ivory Coast appeared three times in the top 15 by percentage increase in search interest: "ivory coast holiday" (+2,250%, 6th-largest), "ivory coast flights" (+1,400%, 11th-largest), and "cheap flights ivory coast" (+1,200%, 13th-largest) – holiday, flight, and cheap-flight searches all rising by four figures.
- Senegal was the most consistently searched-for nation in the top 15 by percentage increase in search interest, appearing four times: "senegal vacation" (+1,725%, 8th-largest), "best time to visit senegal" (+1,500%, 10th-largest), "cheap flights senegal" (+1,267%, 12th-largest), and "senegal holiday" (+1,024%, 15th-largest).
- Several traditionally popular travel destinations among the World Cup nations saw comparatively modest increases (typically double digits to low triple digits), suggesting the tournament had a proportionally bigger effect on lesser-known footballing nations than on countries that were already popular holiday destinations.
Searches That Surged the Most
Cape Verde produced the two biggest increases in the entire dataset: searches for a "cape verde vacation" rose +4,600%, while "cheap flights cape verde" was up +4,200%. Czechia followed in third place, with "czechia holiday" searches climbing +3,100%, ahead of a +2,785% jump in "dr congo flights" for DR Congo and a +2,400% rise in "cheap flights haiti" for Haiti.
Côte d'Ivoire's "ivory coast holiday" search rounded out the top six with a +2,250% increase, while Czechia appeared again in seventh place with "cheap flights czechia" up +1,750%. Senegal made its first of four top-15 appearances in eighth place, with "senegal vacation" searches rising +1,725%.
Cabo Verde – tracked alongside Cape Verde to reflect both names travelers use for the same nation – took ninth place, with "cabo verde holiday" searches up +1,522%. Senegal followed close behind in tenth with "best time to visit senegal" (+1,500%), before Ivory Coast returned in eleventh with "ivory coast flights" (+1,400%).
The rest of the top 15 was rounded out by three more entries for Senegal and one more for Haiti: "cheap flights senegal" (+1,267%, 12th most popular search increase term), "cheap flights ivory coast" (+1,200%, 13th), "haiti vacation" (+1,038%, 14th), and "senegal holiday" (+1,024%, 15th). Between them, Senegal, Ivory Coast, Cape Verde and Haiti accounted for eleven of the fifteen biggest search-term increases recorded across the tournament.
Interactive Graphic
Alongside this article, an interactive graphic has been created – it lets readers explore the full dataset in more depth and it is built around three views:
- Surge Board – a proportional "word cloud" showing the top 20 search terms by percentage increase, with the biggest surges rendered in the largest text. This is the fastest way to get a visual sense of which destinations picked up the most search interest.
- Top 25 – a clean, ranked table listing all 25 biggest search-term increases in order, with the nation, exact search term, and precise percentage increase for each one.
- Search By Nation – a searchable tool covering all 48 World Cup nations. Type or select any country to see every tracked search term for that nation and how much interest in it grew during the tournament. Terms that showed no increase are left out, so what's shown is only the search activity that actually picked up.
Readers can use the graphic to look up any competing nation directly, compare how different destinations performed against each other, or simply scan the Surge Board for a quick overview of where interest spiked the most.
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Methodology
- Total number of search terms analyzed: 392.
- Date ranges compared: 11 June – 19 July (during the World Cup) vs the same number of days prior (3 May – 10 June).
- Analysis was carried out to measure worldwide Google search interest in the 48 World Cup 2026 nations as travel destinations, comparing interest before the tournament with interest during it.
- The 8 search terms tracked for each nation followed one fixed pattern: [nation] flights, cheap flights to [nation], [nation] plane tickets, [nation] vacation, [nation] holiday, best time to visit [nation], what [nation] is known for, and [nation] cuisine.
- Search interest was measured worldwide.
- A single continuous date range was collected in one pull per request, which keeps the before and during windows on the same comparable scale.
- Google Trends compares a maximum of 5 terms at once, and each comparison is scaled independently. Because each nation had 8 terms, they were collected in two overlapping groups that shared one common reference term, allowing the two groups to later be merged onto a single scale.
- For each window, daily values for each term were averaged into a single figure, and the percentage difference between the "during" and "before" averages produced the figures reported in this piece.
- Values represent Google Trends' relative interest on a 0–100 scale rather than a raw count of searches. Within a single nation, the 8 tracked terms and the two time windows can be validly compared with one another.
- For some countries, multiple country names were used. For example, both "Cape Verde" and "Cabo Verde" were tracked as separate search terms, since travelers use both names for the same nation.
