There is a version of this article that defends VAR. It exists. The technology catches clear errors — offside goals, missed red cards, phantom penalties. In that narrow lane, it works. The problem is that football's most contested decisions have never lived in that lane.
At Qatar 2022, VAR confirmed as many arguments as it settled. The handball rules remained opaque. The offside lines — rendered in millimetres by semi-automated tracking — produced correct calls that looked absurd on screen. A toenail offside is technically right. It is also, to most watching, deeply wrong. The technology won the argument and lost the room.
What Changed, and What Didn't
FIFA introduced semi-automated offside technology after 2022, promising faster and more accurate calls. The speed improvement is real. But accuracy without clarity is a different kind of failure. When a goal is ruled out and the explanation requires a graphics package, the match has already been interrupted for too long.
The deeper issue is that VAR was designed to correct clear and obvious errors. In practice, it is used to review almost anything a referee is uncertain about — which is the opposite of its mandate. That scope creep is structural now. No tournament will walk it back.
What 2026 adds is scale. Forty-eight nations, more matches, more marginal calls, more teams with something to lose. The group stage alone will generate a volume of VAR interventions that no previous World Cup has seen. Some of those calls will land in knockout moments. One or two will define how the tournament is remembered.
The Referee Is Still the Problem
No technology fixes poor positioning, inconsistent standards between confederations, or the psychological pressure of a stadium with ninety thousand people in it. The officials at 2026 will be better prepared than at any previous edition. They will still make mistakes that matter. VAR will review some of those mistakes, correct a portion of them, and generate fresh controversy with the rest.
The question going into 2026 isn't whether VAR works. It's whether football has accepted that "works" and "feels fair" are not the same thing — and probably never will be.