The Guardian has launched The Hotspot, a new newsletter examining the relationship between sport and the climate crisis. The project brings together some of the best reporting on how sport is being affected by a changing climate, and what can be done to help shape a way forward.
To subscribe to The Hotspot, readers are directed to a dedicated sign-up page.
The newsletter opens with a reminder of sport’s wider social power. Nelson Mandela once said: “Sport can create hope where once there was only despair.” But the scale of the climate crisis makes that optimism harder to sustain in 2026. Sport still acts as a common language, bringing together people who might otherwise have little in common, yet it is also under growing pressure.
The impact is visible across many parts of sporting life. The pitches people play on, the rivers where athletes swim, the seas where others surf, the mountains they climb, the parks where they run, and even the air they breathe are all being affected as fossil fuel pollution drives environmental change. The result is a sporting landscape being altered in real time.
The Hotspot aims to track that shift and highlight the stories that matter most. As the climate crisis deepens, the newsletter will explore how sport is changing, where the risks are becoming most acute, and what responses may help the sector adapt.
Sport’s connection to the climate crisis is no longer abstract. It is being felt by participants, spectators and communities across the world. From local playing fields to international waters and mountain routes, the places that make sport possible are being changed by rising temperatures, extreme conditions and environmental degradation.
By gathering reporting on these developments in one place, The Hotspot offers readers a focused view of a challenge that is increasingly impossible to ignore. It treats sport not as separate from the climate story, but as one of the areas where its consequences are becoming most visible.
For readers interested in the future of sport in a warming world, the newsletter is intended as a regular guide to the issues, debates and possible solutions that are emerging. It reflects a simple but urgent idea: the climate crisis is changing sport, and sport will need to change with it.
