World Cup ratings surge as Mexico-South Korea breaks Spanish-language record

The World Cup continues to deliver massive audiences, and the latest numbers for Mexico-South Korea are setting new soccer viewership records.

Telemundo revealed that the Mexico-South Korea match on June 18 averaged 14 million viewers across Telemundo and Peacock. That makes the match the most-watched Spanish-language soccer match ever in the United States.

The previous mark was held by the opening Mexico-South Africa match, which averaged 10.1 million viewers in Spanish across the two platforms. (The number was originally reported as 13.4 million but was later revised down.)

The match also featured strong English-language viewership on Fox. The match averaged 9.4 million viewers on the network, making it the most-watched Mexico match ever in English.

EL TRI for the WIN on FOX! 🇲🇽👏

Host-nation Mexico’s 1-0 win over Korea Republic on Thursday, June 18 ranked as the No. 1 telecast of the day on television, regardless of language, with 9,361,000 million viewers on FOX. pic.twitter.com/LjCmf7M9tI

— FOX Sports PR (@FOXSportsPR) June 23, 2026

Combined, the match averaged 23.36 million viewers, good enough to be the second most-watched World Cup match in the United States this year. United States-Paraguay remains the most-watched match with 25.04 million viewers.

While Mexico-South Korea viewership grabbed the headlines, the second week of the FIFA World Cup has resulted in several other strong viewership performances.

Argentina-Algeria on Tuesday averaged 17.68 million viewers across Fox (9.1 million) and Telemundo/Peacock (8.6 million). Even the non-traditional draw of Iraq-Norway was able to pull in 10.71 million viewers in English (5.9 million) and Spanish (4.8 million), surpassing the 10.0 million viewers for France-Senegal earlier in the day.

On Wednesday, England-Croatia pulled in 11.67 million viewers, Uzbekistan-Colombia drew 11.24 million (including 7.2 million viewers in Spanish), and Portugal-Democratic Republic of the Congo averaged 10.04 million.

These viewership numbers are the first to be released since Telemundo announced that its first-week World Cup viewership figures had been revised down. Even with more attention on the validity of World Cup viewership, the networks are still reporting extremely strong audiences.