Nepal and the World Cup: Why Millions of Nepalis Will Be Watching Someone Else's Team

Nepal is not at the 2026 FIFA World Cup. This will surprise no one.

Nepal's national football team is ranked 171st in the world by FIFA. The 2026 World Cup has 48 teams in it. Nepal is not one of them.

And yet, when the tournament kicks off on June 11, millions of Nepalis will be watching. Some will be in sitting rooms in Kathmandu, staying up until 3am. Some will be in Qatar, Dubai, Malaysia, Korea — wherever the diaspora has taken them — watching on their phones between shifts. Some will be in villages with unreliable electricity, gathered around the one screen that works, watching football.

This is what makes Nepali football culture genuinely fascinating. There is no home team. There never has been. And the passion has never needed one.

So who do Nepalis actually support?

The honest answer is — it depends on your generation and your neighbourhood.

Older fans tend to support Brazil or Argentina. These two teams built global fan bases across South Asia in the 1980s and 1990s through sheer brilliance — Maradona, Ronaldo, Zidane, Ronaldinho — names that became household words in places those players never visited.

Younger Nepalis are more likely to support whoever Messi or Ronaldo plays for. Messi's Argentina are at the World Cup. Ronaldo's Portugal are too. The personal loyalty to individual players has become stronger than national loyalty to any particular country.

Then there are the England supporters — usually younger, usually with a soft spot for the Premier League clubs they follow week to week.

The World Cup starts June 11. Nepal is not playing. But Nepali fans will be there — in front of every screen they can find — as loud and invested as any fan on earth.

Pick your team. The matches are about to begin.