How to Watch the 2026 World Cup in Italy: RAI, DAZN and Every Kick-Off Time

The 2026 World Cup reaches Italy on two channels: RAI shows 35 matches free-to-air on Rai 1 and RaiPlay, including the opening game, both semi-finals and the final, while DAZN streams all 104 games by subscription. Because the host venues sit in North America, most kick-offs land in the Italian evening or deep into the night.

Who holds the Italian rights in 2026

For the first time, the pay package for a men's World Cup in Italy did not go to Sky. DAZN secured the full tournament, while RAI kept a free-to-air slice for the marquee fixtures. It is a clean two-way split, and knowing which broadcaster owns which match is the single most useful thing before the tournament starts.

Here is how the two packages break down for viewers at home in Italy:

• DAZN — all 104 matches live, streaming only, with a subscription. Around 69 of those are DAZN exclusives that appear nowhere else in Italy.
• RAI — 35 matches free-to-air on its linear channels and on RaiPlay, overlapping with DAZN on the biggest games.
• Sky — no direct rights this time. The last World Cup Sky carried in full was 2014, so a Sky subscription alone will not get you the games in 2026.

If you only care about the headline fixtures, RAI covers you for free. If you want every group-stage game, including the mid-table clashes that never reach terrestrial TV, DAZN is the only route in Italy. We keep the full, continuously updated commercial rundown on our World Cup 2026 streaming guide, and this article is the editorial companion to it.

What RAI shows for free

RAI's package is built around the games that matter to a general Italian audience. Public broadcaster rights mean no subscription, no paywall and no app fee — just an aerial or an internet connection. The state broadcaster paid a premium for a curated 35-match selection rather than the whole tournament, and it front-loaded the package with the fixtures Italians actually gather around.

The RAI free-to-air selection includes:

• The opening match, which launches the tournament at the Estadio Azteca in Mexico City.
• Every Italy match, conditional on the Azzurri qualifying — a clause that also reduced RAI's fee if Italy failed to reach the finals.
• Both semi-finals, and the final on 19 July.
• At least one match per day through the group stage, plus knockout fixtures, spread mainly across Rai 1 with support from Rai 2 and Rai Sport.
• Non-exclusive radio commentary on all 104 matches.

RAI plans to put the bulk of its coverage — at least 32 of the 35 games — on Rai 1, its flagship channel, with full pre-match and post-match studio analysis in Italian. Everything RAI airs on television is simultaneously free on RaiPlay, its streaming platform, so you can follow the same feed on a phone, tablet, browser or smart-TV app without paying anything.

DAZN: every match, by subscription

DAZN is the only place in Italy to watch all 104 matches, and it is a streaming-only proposition — there is no dedicated DAZN linear TV channel for the World Cup. Coverage runs through the DAZN app on smart TVs, streaming sticks, consoles, phones and browsers. For the roughly 69 games RAI does not touch, DAZN is your sole legal option.

A few practical notes on the DAZN route before you subscribe:

• The service is app- and browser-based, so a stable connection matters more than an aerial. On a big screen you will want a smart TV app or a streaming device rather than casting from a phone.
• Because it carries all 104 matches, DAZN is the option for the neutral-watching completist who wants group-stage games between teams they have no stake in.
• Pricing tiers and simultaneous-stream limits change over time, so check the current plans on DAZN directly rather than trusting a number quoted months earlier.

If you are weighing whether a month of DAZN is worth it versus sticking with RAI's free games, the honest answer depends on your appetite: casual fans are well served by the free 35, while anyone who wants the full group-stage buffet needs the subscription. Our broader streaming setup guide covers how to get app-based services running cleanly on a television.

Kick-off times in Italy: a summer of night football

This is the detail that catches Italian fans off guard. The 2026 World Cup is played across the United States, Canada and Mexico, and during the tournament Italy runs on Central European Summer Time (CEST, UTC+2). The host venues sit six to nine hours behind Italy, which pushes almost every kick-off into the evening or the small hours of the morning.

Venues span the Eastern, Central and Pacific zones, and because Mexico no longer uses daylight saving time the offset from Italy runs from six to nine hours:

• Eastern venues (New York/New Jersey, Miami, Atlanta, Boston, Philadelphia, Toronto) — 6 hours behind Italy.
• US Central venues (Dallas, Houston, Kansas City) — 7 hours behind.
• Mexican venues (Mexico City, Guadalajara, Monterrey) — 8 hours behind, because Mexico dropped daylight saving time in 2022 and stays on UTC-6 all summer.
• Pacific venues (Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, Vancouver) — 9 hours behind.

In practice, the common North American kick-off slots translate roughly like this for a viewer in Italy: an afternoon US game (around 12:00 ET) becomes an 18:00 CEST watch, a 15:00 ET game lands at 21:00, an 18:00 ET game tips off at midnight, and the prime-time 21:00 ET slot — often reserved for marquee knockout ties — starts at 3:00 in the morning Italian time. Expect a stretch of the tournament where the best games demand either a late night or a very early alarm.

There is good news at the very end. The final on 19 July kicked off at 3:00 PM ET at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey — a civilised 21:00 CEST in Italy, prime Sunday-evening viewing. For the rounds before it, though, budget for coffee. If you are trying to work out whether a specific fixture is watchable from your sofa, our can-I-watch checker is built for exactly that kind of where-and-when question.

How to stream every match live in Italy

Putting the two broadcasters together gives most Italian fans a simple recipe: use RAI and RaiPlay for the free headline games, and add DAZN only if you want the full slate. Both work across the same devices, so the setup is more about logins than hardware. Here is the order we would follow.

1. 1Start with RaiPlay. It is free, requires only a quick registration, and covers the opening match, Italy's games, the semi-finals and the final. For many viewers this alone is enough.
2. 2Add DAZN if you want everything. Install the app on your main TV or streaming device, sign in, and you have all 104 matches including the exclusives.
3. 3Get your living-room screen sorted early. A smart-TV app or a streaming stick beats casting from a phone for a two-hour match. Our notes on Android TV setups apply here.
4. 4Test your feed on a low-stakes group game, not on kick-off night for the final. Buffering is far easier to fix a week early than five minutes before a semi-final.

A wired connection or a strong 5GHz signal to the TV will spare you the stutter that ruins a live match. If you are curious how much headroom your line has for HD streaming, our free speed test gives you a quick read before the tournament crowds the network.

Reaching your home RAI stream from abroad

Here is the scenario that trips up travelling Italians: you are on holiday, on a work trip or living overseas during the tournament, you open RaiPlay to catch Italy or the final, and you hit a geo-block. RaiPlay is licensed for Italy, and outside the country it simply will not play most live sport, because broadcast rights are sold territory by territory.

There is one nuance worth knowing about EU rules. The EU's cross-border portability regulation guarantees access to your home service while travelling temporarily in another EU country only for paid subscriptions — so a DAZN subscriber can usually reach their Italian DAZN from elsewhere in the EU. For a free, licence-funded service like RaiPlay the regulation is optional, and RAI has not reliably switched it on for live sport, so RaiPlay's live feeds are commonly geo-blocked even elsewhere in the EU — and go dark completely further afield, whether that is a beach in North Africa, a trip to the UK, or a move to the US or Asia.

This is where a VPN comes in. A VPN routes your connection through a server back in Italy, so RaiPlay sees an Italian connection and serves you the same free feed you would get at home. It is the standard fix for accessing a service you already pay for — or in RAI's case, one that is free — while you happen to be abroad. The practical checklist is short:

• Choose a provider with reliable servers in Italy and enough speed for HD, since you are adding a transatlantic hop.
• Connect to an Italian city, then open RaiPlay or DAZN and sign in as normal.
• If a stream stutters or a page still detects your location, switch to a different Italian server and clear the app cache. A quick DNS leak check confirms your traffic is genuinely routing through Italy.

We rank the services that hold up for live sport, with their real Italian-server performance, on our best VPNs for sport page. Use your own account and your own subscription; a VPN changes where your connection appears to originate, not who you are.

Radio, highlights and catching up on demand

Not every match is a sit-down-and-watch event, especially when kick-off is at 3:00 in the morning. Between RAI's radio rights and both platforms' on-demand libraries, there is a way to follow the tournament that fits around sleep and work rather than fighting them. This matters more in 2026 than in a European-hosted edition, precisely because of the time difference.

Your lower-effort options:

• RAI radio carries live commentary on all 104 matches, non-exclusively — ideal for a night game you want to hear without lighting up the whole house.
• RaiPlay on demand lets you replay any match RAI televised, so a semi-final that ran past midnight is there to watch over breakfast.
• DAZN on demand holds full-match replays and condensed highlights of everything, useful for the exclusive group games with no RAI equivalent.
• RAI also promised highlights and clips of all matches across its digital platforms, so even the games it did not air live get a recap.

If you are the sort of fan who wants to avoid the score until you have watched the replay, mute your group chats and stay off social until you have caught up — the six-to-nine-hour gap means spoilers land while you sleep. For choosing the right service for privacy while you are at it, our privacy-focused VPN rankings are a sensible starting point.

The bottom line for Italian fans

The 2026 World Cup is genuinely accessible in Italy without spending a euro if you are happy with the 35 marquee games: RAI and RaiPlay have the opener, Italy's matches, both semi-finals and the final. Pay for DAZN only if you want all 104. The real planning challenge is not cost but the clock, and a little preparation turns a scattered set of late-night kick-offs into a watchable tournament.

Sort your streaming apps and your living-room screen this week, note which slots fall after midnight, and if you are travelling, line up an Italian-server VPN before you leave so RaiPlay follows you. For the full ranked provider comparison and the latest rights updates, head to our main VPN rankings and the dedicated World Cup 2026 hub.