German broadcasters ARD and ZDF will broadcast 60 of the 104 FIFA World Cup 2026 matches live, with each channel showing 30 games. While the opening match was shown live on ZDF and the final will also be, all matches of the German national team will be broadcast on ARD or ZDF.
Both ARD and ZDF have separate – but highly integrated – production workflows in Germany for the World Cup, as well as on the ground in the US, Canda and Mexico. All content from location is being sent straight back to ZDF’s National Broadcast Centre (NBC) in Mainz, and then onto the ARD SportHub, where staff from the joint organisation of Germany’s regional public service broadcasters run the ARD studio and facilities to create its own unique output for ARD’s nationwide Das Erste channel, and ARD Mediathek (ARD Media Library). ARD Mediathek is where all 60 ARD and ZDF live matches are also available for on demand replay, as are the highlights of all 104 matches (and also on sportschau.de).
Several new features are also available in the ARD Mediathek World Cup offerings: viewers can watch highlights, documentaries, and ARD matches via live stream and replay, and for the first time, ARD Mediathek is providing live statistics for each match and the entire tournament across all devices (smart TVs, mobile apps, and web browsers). This includes information on individual players, current tournament brackets, scores from other venues, live standings, and much more.
Cross media coverage
ARD is providing comprehensive, cross-media coverage of the FIFA World Cup 2026 from the ARD SportHub at the Sportschau Campus in Cologne, where Lea Wagner and Malte Völz, together with the new ARD expert Robin Gosens, are presenting ARD’s coverage.
ARD consolidated the production management of its major sporting events centrally at broadcaster Westdeutscher Rundfunk’s (WDR’s) Sportschau Campus in Cologne in 2025 with the creation of ARD SportHub. This means the broadcasters under the ARD wing, including WDR, Südwestrundfunk (SWR) and Norddeutscher Rundfunk (NDR), are more easily able to coordinate and work effectively together.
SWR is ARD’s lead broadcaster for the FIFA World Cup 2026. Tobias Wallentin, a head of engineering for SWR, and also overseeing ARD’s broadcasting base in Cologne for the World Cup, comments: “We are here in the SportHub in Cologne. It’s nearly the same as the NBC for ZDF, but this SportHub is the ARD location where we normally produce Sportschau.
“We are using the studio facilities which are used for the Sportschau and is now used for the FIFA World Cup,” continues Wallentin. “The only thing is it’s a brand new design for the FIFA World Cup, with new LED walls and everything. We are using two pedestal cameras, one crane and one steadicam, and have four large LED screens in there.”
ARD is also offering two special programme options for viewers. As an added bonus, viewers will be able to watch all games from a tactical perspective via a multistream player.
For Germany’s first match, there was a multistream channel from KiKA with live commentary by children’s sports reporter Niklas, together with Stephanie Baczyk.
Says Wallentin: “For the children, ARD is offering a special broadcast on the KiKA channel. A young reporter was doing commentary on the German match, which was shown in picture-in-picture. It’s a really great experience for the kids, as they get to watch a child doing the reporting.”
ARD on location
ARD has three ENG crews at the German team base camp, which is based in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, US. Says Steffen Kretz, a head of engineering at SWR and for ARD, and head of venues for the World Cup, working on the ground in the US: “They will travel to the stadiums where Germany is playing as well, and we have two cross-media reporters that have DIY kits with them. They have also LiveU’s with them so they can do standups and so on.”
Kretz comments on the ARD approach from the stadiums during the ARD produced games for the World Cup. “The approach for ARD is a little bit different for some games compared to ZDF. We have our talents, Esther Sedlaczek and Bastian Schweinsteiger. We have them on site for our selected ARD matches.
“We call these programmes Match of the Day and we will be presenting those games from a second commentary position. We will be using the commentary camera provided by HBS and we will use the commentary unit to transmit the audio and have communication via the commentary unit. We have one technician supporting those two, adjusting the camera and doing the technical things there.
“We’re using two iPads [on site in the US],” continues Kretz. “One to have the feed of the analysis that is done in Cologne [so our expert can see what is happening at home], and another iPad to have the programme feed. Both are transmitted via SRT. Pre-show, post-show and the halftime show will be presented from this position.
” Special Match of the Day programmes of course will be the two German matches [that ARD has the rights to in the group stage]. For the German matches, we will be using our new venue kits run by ARD and ZDF together. We are using new venue kits, small kits for transmitting two camera signals, which use LiveU technology. This means we can do a remote production with a very small footprint in the US.”
ARD will continue with its Match of the Day operation in the latter knockout stages of the competition, says Kretz. It will be able to highlight more games with the Match of the Day programme, as there is more time to get from location to location, says Kretz.
“Actually we stick to the plan with the Match of the Day, and that’s totally independent of the success of the German team,” Kretz notes. “We will have 10 games out in the knockout stage and approximately seven games will then be Match of the Day’s because travelling gets lighter because the games are not so back to back, compared to the group stage.”
Kretz comments on the social media and online coverage for ARD that is being generated on site: “We have social media reporters on site, three of them equipped with DIY equipment, Sony cameras, Osmo Pocket, Gimbal systems, and they will do social media, online and some times even classic TV standups reporting on the site for the whole tournament. One will stick with the German team, one will travel around Mexico, Canada, and the US. The third team will travel around in Germany to capture emotions and feelings of the fans “
Wallentin adds on social media: “All the social media is collected here in Cologne and goes from here out to social media platforms.”
Radio gaga
On radio broadcasting, ARD is using an automix system for all of its full length commentaries for the first time. Lama Automix by Ross Video handles the mixing for reports both from the offtube in Cologne and live from the stadiums. In addition, a traditional, manually operated radio broadcast complex in Cologne works on the mix for the Sportschau audio livestream.
ARD is producing more than 60 World Cup matches as full length audio commentaries for ARD Audiothek named Sounds, Sportschau.de, and linear radio, with some recorded on site, but the majority recorded remotely in Cologne. What is new is that radio broadcasting – just like the TV sector – is no longer present at the host country’s IBC in Dallas.
Every day, a podcast called WM Update featuring all the results and topics from the night before is produced for early risers. This is created by the authors using a mobile do-it-yourself podcast kit, consisting of a Rodecaster mixer and a vMix system used to connect colleagues from overseas.
ARD also produces more than 1,300 live talks on two exclusive lines directly on site, with reporters broadcasting via their mobile units in combination with the ARD-Mupro app and iRig microphones. Alternatively, they broadcast from the ARD hotel at the DFB quarters, using a flyaway production system managed by an on site technician.
Technical challenges
Kretz says the challenge for ARD – apart from the kickoff timings, timezones, and shifts that have been organised to accommodate that for staff in Cologne – is about signal timing.
Kretz explains: “From time to timing; that’s a general thing with remote production that the timing for the signals are getting even more complicated than in the past because we cut off the cables coming out of an OB van and now we have lots and lots of kilometres between the MCR, the PCR and the actual point of presentation.
“This is challenging because the signals need time to travel – we are talking about roughly half a second before you can see a signal on the SRT iPad and then you can start talking – and then together with the camera signal, this takes another second to get back to Germany. So that’s something you have to keep an eye on.
“We have to fight with several timing levels and I think that’s, from a technical point of view, another very challenging thing, not only for the technicians, but also the talent has to get used to that because that’s a totally different feeling and approach.”
On site at the IBC in Dallas, ARD and ZDF have partnered with MTI Teleport München, a media backbone operator and teleport facility providing broadcasting, satellite, and fibre optic network services across Germany. MTI is sending the host broadcast signals back to the NBC and from there, those signals travel onto the SportHub.
Wallentin comments: “The signals are coming via fibre from ZDF’s master control room at the NBC directly to Cologne. ZDF is giving us all the signals in 1080i25 to Cologne because of an economic decision. The Multi-Feeds Package is delivered and standard converted to 1080i25 together for ARD and ZDF by Eurovision from the US at the NBC.
“Additionally, eight router outputs at the IBC, and three UNI VandAs for the comcams are carried from MTI to Germany. For those signals, the standard conversion to 1080i25 is handled at the NBC.”
Wallentin continues: “We receive 41 video and four MADI signals from the NBC at the Sporthub in total. We are using the same carrier – MTI – here in Germany, and MTI is also doing the fibre link from America to Germany. We have three video and two MADI connections back to the NBC. We are using MADI as well for communication and for the radio. ARD is doing the radio transmission as well in Cologne. The venue kits in the stadiums are also connected to Cologne.”
The editing in Cologne involves eight suites, each using Adobe Premiere. “The Adobe Premiere combined with the EVS Via system has been used here initially in this setup,” concludes Wallentin.
