Some records are made to be broken. Israel’s Kan 11 just broke one that had stood since the Clinton administration.
The FIFA World Cup 2026 final between Argentina and Spain delivered a 40.6% audience rating for Kan 11, Israel’s public broadcaster, pulling in 1,576,000 viewers for a match that kicked off at 10 p.m. local time. That is the highest rating the network has recorded for any World Cup final since 1998, ending a nearly three-decade drought in landmark sports broadcasting moments.
When you add every platform together, total viewership across Israel for the match reached approximately 5.4 million. For a country of roughly 10 million people, that is a significant share of the entire population tuning into a single sporting event in a single evening.
Why a late-night soccer match became must-see television
The Argentina-Spain matchup carried obvious narrative weight. Argentina entered as defending World Cup champions, having won the 2022 Qatar tournament in one of the most dramatic finals in the competition’s history. Spain, perennial contenders with a deep tradition of technically precise football, made for a natural foil.
