What did I say? Yes, Ted Lasso would return during the 2026 World Cup season, hosted by the United States, Canada, and Mexico. And yes, Apple TV+ has confirmed the fourth season’s premiere for the “summer of 2026” — a technical detail that, in practice, confirms a carefully coordinated strategy. After all, “summer” in the American calendar runs from June to August.

The World Cup will kick off on June 11, 2026, with the final scheduled for July 19, 2026. For the first time, the tournament will feature 48 national teams. It will be played across 16 host cities, with 11 of them in the United States, including New York/New Jersey, Los Angeles, Miami, Dallas, Atlanta, Seattle, San Francisco, Boston, Philadelphia, Kansas City, and Houston. For a little over a month, football will become the symbolic center of a country that has long treated the sport as something foreign.

It is within this landscape that Ted Lasso returns. And nothing about this comeback is innocent.

The series began as an unlikely sports comedy but became something much bigger during the pandemic. While the world was going through isolation, fear, and emotional collapse, Ted Lasso offered a kind of storytelling that had nearly disappeared from contemporary television: a belief in empathy, listening, and the possibility of transformation. It was not just a ratings success; it was a cultural phenomenon. It won Emmys, became a reference point, became a language, and became an emotional refuge. That is why the fourth season carries a rare weight: it does not merely need to be good. It needs to justify its own existence.

Surpassing the impact of the pandemic is a challenge few series have faced — and almost none have truly overcome. Ted Lasso was not just a product of its time; it was a symbol of it. Returning in 2026 means competing not only for audience attention but for emotional memory. It means risking comparison not with other series, but with an idealized version of itself.

The narrative of the new season seems aware of that risk. Ted returns to Richmond, but now to coach a second-division women’s football team. The shift is not merely a change of setting; it is a shift in discourse. By moving the focus to women’s football, the series leaves behind the comfort of repetition and enters politically, symbolically, and culturally sensitive territory. In the very year the World Cup is hosted by the United States, Ted Lasso chooses to tell the story of a form of football that still has to prove its worth.

The original cast returns as the emotional anchor of the series. Jason Sudeikis is back as Ted Lasso and as an executive producer. Hannah Waddingham returns as Rebecca Welton. Juno Temple reprises Keeley Jones. Brett Goldstein returns as Roy Kent, Brendan Hunt reprises Coach Beard, and Jeremy Swift returns as Leslie Higgins. Alongside them, new names join the cast: Tanya Reynolds, Jude Mack, Faye Marsay, Rex Hayes, Aisling Sharkey, Abbie Hern, and Grant Feely.

From the first images, it appears that Tanya Reynolds will be one of Lasso’s assistants, and behind the scenes, the series is also reinventing itself. The expansion of the writers’ room suggests that Apple does not merely want to extend the series — it wants to reposition it. A risky move.

Perhaps the most honest question about Ted Lasso’s return is not “why did the series come back?”, but “why did it come back exactly now?”. In 2026, the United States will be at the center of global football, streaming will be even more saturated with franchises, and nostalgia will be one of the industry’s most valuable currencies. Ted Lasso returns not only as a series but also as a discourse: about sport, about American identity, about gender, about leadership, and about what it means to believe in something in a world that has forgotten how to believe.

If, during the pandemic, Ted Lasso was an emotional response to chaos, in 2026, it risks becoming something else: a test of maturity. For the series, for the audience, and for the very idea that kindness can still be revolutionary.

And perhaps that is precisely why it returns in the year of the World Cup.