2026
FIFA World Cup
USA · Mexico · Canada
Planning
IMB · Innovation Team
When the world watches, the gospel can be heard.
Every four years, billions gather for the World Cup and the Olympics. For a few weeks, the nations are in one place. We're there — on the ground and in the chat — to share the hope of Christ.
What is Global Sports Outreach?
Billions watching. A handful of weeks. One gospel.
Global Sports Outreach is an IMB initiative that uses the world's biggest sporting events as gospel encounters. Teams travel. NFC-equipped pins, multilingual responders, and YouVersion reading plans extend the reach far beyond what on-the-ground volunteers could do alone.
The result: long-term gospel relationships born in a stadium parking lot, a fan zone, or a quick chat with a digital responder watching from her living room.
Featured Event
2026 FIFA World Cup
The 2026 World Cup will draw an estimated 5 billion viewers across the USA, Mexico, and Canada — the largest gathering of fans the tournament has ever seen.
We're staging on-the-ground teams in host cities and standing up multilingual digital responders to engage fans in 16+ languages, right where they're already paying attention.
5B
Projected Viewers
48
Nations Competing
16
Host Cities
Featured Event
Milano-Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics
The 2026 Winter Olympics open in Italy this February. Tourists, athletes, and broadcast crews from across the globe will descend on Milan and Cortina for two weeks.
IMB teams will be there with Bibles in multiple languages, NFC gospel pins for the famous Olympic pin-trading tradition, and digital responders ready to chat with anyone who scans a pin and wants to learn more about Jesus.
2.9M
Tickets Sold
93
Nations Competing
16
Responder Languages
A moment from Paris, 2024
The Story
Three pins. One conversation that didn't end.
Saint-Denis. The velodrome. The closing-ceremony hall. Three different pins, three different venues, three different reasons for a fan to keep showing up.
A pin trader collected all of them. Each one carried an NFC tag that opened a gospel landing page in his language. He tapped. He asked questions. He ended up chatting live with a responder watching from her living room, three time zones away.
When the Games closed, his conversation didn't. The responder handed him off to an IMB worker already serving in his home country. He's still reading the Bible. He's still asking questions.
This is what funding does. This is what showing up does.
2026 is the moment Paris was rehearsal for.
Why It Works
A pin in your hand. A reading plan on your phone. A real person to talk to.
01
Tangible touchpoint
Custom-designed gospel pins, sought after by pin traders, carry NFC tags that open a landing page with the gospel and a Bible reading plan.
02
Digital follow-up
A YouVersion plan and live chat in 16+ languages mean a curious fan doesn't have to wait — or speak English — to keep the conversation going.
03
Long-term handoff
Responders connect interested fans to an IMB missionary serving in their country — so the conversation continues long after the closing ceremony.
Voices
Real people. Real work.
"I was in my pajamas in Atlanta, but I was talking with a fan in Tokyo about Jesus. That sentence didn't exist five years ago."
"I handed out forty pins in one afternoon at the fan zone. By the next morning, three of them had triggered live chats. The pin is small. The conversation isn't."
"A woman in São Paulo messaged me a week after the Olympics ended. She'd been chatting with a responder she'd never meet. She wanted to know if there was anyone like that in her city. There was. Me."
The Clock
9 mo.
until Milano-Cortina
14 mo.
until World Cup kickoff
What happens at the Games is decided now.
Pin production runs months in advance. Responders are trained on six-month cycles. Bibles printed in the right languages take weeks to ship. Teams need to know they're going early enough to raise their support.
Every dollar that comes in now is worth more than every dollar that comes in later.
Upcoming
The next moments
Major global sporting events on our radar — places where billions watch and millions travel, creating windows for gospel encounters.
Feb 2026
Winter Olympics
Milano · Cortina
Active
2027
Cricket World Cup
South Africa · Zimbabwe · Namibia
Exploring
2028
Summer Olympics
Los Angeles
Exploring
Don't just watch the World Cup. Be part of it.
Your gift sends teams, prints Bibles, makes pins, and trains responders.