The countdown to the 2026 World Cup officially begins this Friday when FIFA holds the draw at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., to determine the groups for the tournament and the matchups for the qualifying teams. Expectations are high. Next year’s World Cup is set to be the biggest sporting event on the planet, with 48 national teams participating — the highest number ever at a World Cup. The United States, Mexico, and Canada will host the tournament, which will be staged across 16 cities: 11 in the U.S. and the remaining five in Mexico and Canada.
Donald Trump intends to be the main protagonist. A year ago, immediately after winning the election for his second term in the White House, he created a task force with key members of his administration and top FIFA executives to try to coordinate logistical and security challenges. But in recent months, Trump has tightened immigration policies to the extreme, which seems to be deterring some of the hundreds of thousands of fans who want to travel to the country to attend the World Cup.
Andrew Giuliani, the White House representative for the FIFA task force — and son of former New York mayor and Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani — has sought to allay these fears for citizens purchasing World Cup tickets. He also stated that Washington is making a significant effort to reduce visa processing times for fans.
However, he admitted that he cannot rule out the possibility of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids and arrests during the tournament. “The one thing — and I’ve known the president for 25 years — the president has not ruled out anything that will make American citizens safer,” Giuliani said Wednesday. “The president has highlighted that he wants people to legally come to the United States, go through the legal process. And I know that Secretary [Kristi] Noem and the Department of Homeland Security have stressed that there’s a system for people that are here illegally to be able to go and leave the country, get a thousand dollars to leave the country, and potentially apply legally,” he added in a press conference with international media outlets.
Visas
Immigration and security are two of the key political issues of Trump’s second term. The Republican mixes the two in his speeches, sometimes resorting to highly xenophobic rhetoric. But Giuliani prefers to ignore this: “We want to welcome the world to come here legally. That way, we also can identify who is here. And that way, we can make it safer not just for American citizens, but the millions of international visitors that are going to come here,” he said.
For European countries that already have a diplomatic cooperation agreement with the United States the document known as ESTA — the Electronic System for Travel Authorization to the United States — will suffice. The ESTA is a short visa waiver form that allows visits of up to 90 days for primarily tourism purposes.
Giuliani explained that Trump sees the streamlining of visas for soccer fans if they have a World Cup ticket as “an invitation to the United States of America over our 250th birthday, over a great time in our country’s history.”
Political tensions
The tightening of immigration policies is making it more difficult for citizens of several countries to enter the U.S. Following the attack on two National Guard members in Washington last week, Trump ordered a visa freeze for 19 “third world” countries. It remains to be seen if any more countries will be affected. For now, those who will definitely face restrictions are fans from Iran and Haiti, both of which have qualified for the tournament.
Initially, players, federation staff members and essential support personnel, such as massage therapists and dietitians, will be allowed entry into the country, along with their immediate family members. Other fans will find it more difficult to attend matches live. “Every visa decision is a national security decision first and foremost […] And it’s the president’s goal first and foremost every day to make sure that he can not just protect American citizens that are here, but all of those for the World Cup, international travelers, that are here,” Giuliani stated. “As I said in my opening statements, if anybody is coming here to potentially cause trouble, there is zero tolerance for that. And we’re going to make sure that we do everything possible to vet that before they get to the United States.”
Ticket prices
However, tickets aren’t exactly cheap. Group stage tickets start at around $60, but the most expensive tickets for the final can cost up to $6,750, or even more, thanks to FIFA’s “dynamic pricing” system. New York City’s incoming mayor, Zohran Mamdani, has already called on FIFA to lower ticket prices for residents of the host cities.
In this regard, FIFA has decided to forgo the widespread use of dynamic pricing, which fluctuates based on demand for each match. The organization confirmed that it will reserve a number of tickets at fixed prices for specific categories of fans, particularly supporters from the national federations competing in the World Cup. Each federation will receive 8% of the tickets for each match in which its national team plays. The price of the remaining tickets will be subject to demand.
Asked about the difference between the upcoming World Cup in 2026 and the one the United States hosted in 1994, Giuliani said: “The ’94 World Cup was obviously only 24 teams; now you’ve got 48 teams. I mean, when we say this is going to be the largest sporting event in human history, it’s the first time an entire continent has banded together to host a World Cup: double the amount of teams and three times the amount of countries between Canada and Mexico as well.” The White House envoy for the World Cup explained the prior work the U.S. has carried out on security and the threats they have analyzed at all major international sporting competitions since then.
“We learned a lot from 1994. We’ve also learned a lot from hosting the [Winter] Olympics in 2002. We continue to look at what Qatar did and what others who have hosted the World Cup as well recently, other people like we mentioned, the International Police Cooperation Center, which we learned for FIFA through Germany and the Euros in 2024,” he said.
Giuliani also highlighted the growing popularity of soccer in the United States. “If you look at the viewership of World Cup finals, it was in hundreds — high hundreds of millions in the ’90s and early 2000s. That number is now — I think in Qatar it was 1.5 billion. I think the expectation might be two billion people watching the final alone in this World Cup. So it’s not just grown in the United States, where percentage-wise it’s grown probably more than anywhere else or as much as anywhere else, but grown in the rest of the world.”
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