England are through.
After last night's win over DR Congo sent the Three Lions into a tie with Mexico at the Azteca on Monday morning, the search data is telling its own version of the story, and it backs up what the pundits are saying.
Every time England has won this tournament, the nation hasn't just celebrated. It's searched.
Shirt sales start in the search bar
Search interest in "England shirt" doesn't move gently through this tournament; it spikes, hard on the night of every win, then settles back down until the next one.
- Croatia (17/06): searches for England shirts jumped from 45,000 the day before to 100,000, a 122% increase, and the single biggest spike of the tournament so far.
- Ghana (23/06): a jump from 26,000 to 51,000, up 96% overnight.
- Panama (27/06): the sharpest percentage rise yet, from 18,000 to 56,000, a 211% increase.
- DR Congo (01/07, last night's result): searches climbed from 17,000 to 36,000, up 112% in 24 hours.
Zoom out, and the trend is unmistakable: outside of matchdays, "England shirt" searches sit in a steady band of roughly 25,000–40,000. Every single win has broken that pattern. Fans aren't just watching; they're actively looking to kit themselves out in the aftermath of a result, in real time, on their phones, before the final whistle's echo has even faded. Great news for our partner Classic Football Shirts!
A bigger story: how does this compare to Qatar?
The size of a spike isn't just a shirt-sales signal; it's a proxy for how much the public actually cares. A bigger jump in search interest after a group-stage win means more people are switching on, tuning in, and are emotionally invested in this squad than they were four years ago.
That's what makes the Qatar 2022 comparison so interesting. England went into that tournament under Gareth Southgate; this campaign is the first major tournament under Thomas Tuchel. If the search spikes this time around are consistently bigger than the equivalent group-stage wins in Qatar, that's a genuinely newsworthy signal, evidence that public mood around this England team, under a new manager, is running hotter than it was under Southgate at the same stage of the last tournament.
- 2022, Group Game 1 (Iran, 21/11/22): 53,000 → 100,000 — +89%
- 2022, Group Game 2 (USA, 21/11/22) 33,000 → 75,000 — +127%
- 2022, Group Game 3 (Wales, 21/11/22) 20,000 → 54,000 — +170%
- 2026, Group Game 1 (Croatia, 17/06/26): 45,000 → 100,000 — +122%
- 2026, Group Game 2 (Ghana, 23/06/26): 26,000 → 51,000 — +96%
- 2026, Group Game 3 (Panama, 27/06/26): 18,000 → 56,000 — +211%
Averaged out, the group-stage spike under Southgate in Qatar came in at +129%. Under Tuchel this time around, it's +143%, roughly 14 percentage points higher. And it's not just a bigger opening night skewing the numbers: England's tournament opener produced the exact same peak search volume in both cases (100,000, for both Iran and Croatia), which means this isn't a story about a louder start; it's a story about sustained, growing engagement across the group stage that Qatar didn't match.
(Worth noting: the USA game in Qatar was a 0-0 draw, not a win; even so, it still drove a 127% spike, which only strengthens the point that this is about attention, not just results.)
If the pattern holds, it tells a story that goes well beyond search volume: this is a team that's re-engaging a public that had, by some measures, drifted from the national side. Search data doesn't lie about attention, and right now, attention is climbing.
It's not just shirts. It's the whole occasion.
The shirt data tells the headline story, but it's not the only search behaviour on the move. Over the last few days, we've also seen a marked rise in people searching "what time is the England match on", a clear signal that interest in this squad is pulling in fans well beyond the core, tuning in specifically because England are winning.
Interestingly, one search term hasn't moved: "what time are pubs open until on Sunday" has stayed flat. Read into that what you will, maybe it says everyone already knows the answer, or maybe it says nobody's planning on going home early, either way.
Why this matters
This is what search-first thinking looks like in practice. Search data doesn't just tell you what happened; it tells you what people are about to do next: what they want to buy, where they want to be, and how they want to plan around a moment that matters to them. For brands watching this tournament, the story isn't just "England won." It's "England won, and the entire nation just told Google exactly how they're going to respond to it."
With Mexico up next at the Azteca on Monday, expect the same pattern and, if the last four results are anything to go by, an even bigger spike than the one we saw last night.
Southgate got England to a final. The search data suggests Tuchel is getting them a nation that's paying even closer attention, and on Monday morning, at the Azteca, we'll find out if that's worth even more.
