Zurich stayed up: the city's World Cup nights, read off the electricity meter
The ewz quarter-hour data show what Zurich actually did during the World Cup: on the Argentina night, roughly one household in three stayed awake. No alarm clock, straight through. The city edition of our Swiss World Cup electricity study, game by game.
1 · The Argentina night on the Limmat
On a normal summer Sunday, Zurich's household electricity falls steeply after midnight into its weekend trough. Towards 4am the city consumes less than at any other time. In the small hours of 12 July the trough never came: from kickoff at 3am to the bitter end at half past five, the city ran a constant 13 to 15 percent above normal. Summed up: around 131,000 kilowatt-hours of extra consumption in one night. As if the city had gained an extra neighbourhood that never went to sleep.
City of Zurich, electricity delivered to households (grid level 7, ewz), Sat 11 July 20:00 to Sun 12 July 10:00, in MWh per hour. Baseline = same-hour mean across tournament-free summer days of the same weekday (n=9–10). The orange band marks the match: kickoff 3:00, extra time from ~4:55, final whistle ~5:40. Where the grey curve dips into its weekend trough, the dark curve stays up: the city never went to bed. Source: Open Data City of Zurich.
2 · No alarm clock: Zurich pulled an all-nighter
Had Zurich set its alarms for just before 3, the curve would have to jump at kickoff. Hundreds of thousands of devices switching on at once. The jump amounts to all of 1.6 percentage points: extra consumption already sits at +12 percent from midnight. The city simply stayed up; a few latecomers joined during the first half (up to +15 percent at 4am).
Quarter-hourly household load, City of Zurich, Sat 22:00 to Sun 7:45, vs. baseline. If many had set alarms for just before 3, there would be a jump at kickoff. There is none: the extra load already sits at +12% from midnight and rises only +1.6 points into kickoff. Switzerland didn't set an alarm. It simply never went to bed. (Basel: kickoff jump +0.1 points.)
No alarm: Zurich simply powered through.
3 · Colombia till 1, Algeria at 5, Canada after work
The Argentina night was no one-off, but the peak of a series. The round-of-16 drama against Colombia (penalties until quarter to one, on a Tuesday) held the city above 11 percent past 2am; the 5am game against Algeria lifted the morning exactly from kickoff to final whistle; the Canada game turned an ordinary Wednesday evening into +16 percent. Only the Saturday-evening game against Qatar is invisible. On Saturday evenings, Zurich is awake anyway.
City of Zurich, household load Tue 7 July 18:00 to Wed 8 July 6:00 vs. a normal Tuesday/Wednesday. 120 goalless minutes plus a penalty shootout until ~0:50. On a work night. The curve stays more than 11 percent elevated past 2am: the country watched the shootout drama to the end and only then went to sleep. 1.2M watched (78.3% market share).
City of Zurich, household load Fri 3 July 0:00–12:00 vs. a normal Friday. The extra load rises into the 5:00 kickoff and fades after the final whistle. Locked to the match to the hour. Weather or chance cannot produce this pattern: heat doesn't wake anyone at exactly 5am. 535,000 watched (86.7% market share, Mediapulse/SRF).
City of Zurich, household load Wed 24 June 18:00 to Thu 25 June 6:00 vs. a normal Wednesday (n=9). The decisive group game (2:1) on a work evening. Source: Open Data City of Zurich.
4 · The city stayed up, the agglomeration went to bed
It is the comparison with the surrounding region that makes Zurich's night truly visible: in the EKZ grid area, the canton of Zurich without the city, the deviation on the Argentina night was only about half the city's value; in Winterthur, +8.4 percent. The more urban, the more awake. And the bill? The all-night vigil cost a Zurich household around 16 centimes of electricity. The sleep that went missing was dearer: RAND puts the follow-on costs of chronic insomnia for Switzerland at up to 10.1 billion francs a year.
And while the city slept off its hangover on Sunday, employees in thousands of Zurich households cleaned, cooked and cared. The people who keep households running and appear in no statistic. The full analysis. Six games, six grids, 26 cantons, methodology and raw data, is in the main study: «Switzerland Never Went to Bed».
Sources
- Open Data City of Zurich: ewz electricity delivery by grid level, quarter-hour values (2026), Household electricity, city of Zurich (NE7)
- EKZ & Stadtwerk Winterthur: gross load profiles (opendata.swiss) (2026), City–agglomeration comparison
- Mediapulse via SRF media portal (2026), 830,000 TV peak for the quarter-final, 93.6% market share
- ELCOM: median household electricity price (2026), 27.7 centimes/kWh (H4)
- RAND Europe: costs of chronic insomnia in Switzerland (2023), up to CHF 10.1 billion/year
- Clino. Main World Cup electricity study incl. CSV raw data (2026), clino.ch/en/press/world-cup-power-nights-2026
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