Resale ticket prices for nearly every 2026 World Cup game have declined in recent weeks, with tickets to dozens of matches — including the U.S. opener — now available for less than FIFA’s list price in the same category.
Generally, the prices on third-party sites and FIFA’s own resale platform remain higher than those on the primary market, a sign of high demand — or at least perceived demand.
But with the World Cup now just over one month away, the regression long anticipated by experts seems to have begun. Over the past 14 days, the so-called “get-in price” — for the cheapest available ticket — has fallen for 76 of the tournament’s 78 matches in the United States, according to TicketData.com, which tracks prices on sites such as StubHub, Vivid Seats and SeatGeek.
For exactly half of those games, the get-in price fell by 20% or more over that two-week timespan, according to TicketData.
It also fell for the vast majority of games over the past 30 days, seven days and three days, a sign that the trend is both sustained and ongoing.
Prices are harder to track on FIFA’s “Marketplace,” which the global soccer governing body has promoted as the World Cup’s official ticket resale platform. But they are relatively easy to compare with the prices of unsold tickets that FIFA is offering on a first-come first-served basis.
For months, FIFA’s prices, while roundly criticized by fans, remained significantly lower than nearly all resale prices. Many fans, therefore, lined up for lotteries or in long digital queues to get their shot at the cheapest tickets to their games of choice.
As of Wednesday night, however, 25 of the 52 group-stage games in the U.S. showed at least one ticket in at least one category available on the resale marketplace for less than FIFA’s prices — even after taking into account FIFA’s 15% add-on fees.
Seventeen of those games had cheaper tickets available in both Category 1 and 2, which encompass a majority of sections at every stadium.
For around 10 games, the price in both categories was more than $100 cheaper on the resale platform than on FIFA’s primary platform.
And for five games, the resale price was cheaper in all three categories. Those games are:
- U.S. vs. Paraguay, June 12 at SoFi Stadium near Los Angeles
- Iraq vs. Norway, June 16 at Gillette Stadium near Boston
- Austria vs. Jordan, June 16 at Levi’s Stadium near San Francisco
- Cape Verde vs. Saudi Arabia, June 26 at NRG Stadium in Houston
- Algeria vs. Austria, June 27 at Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City
Resale prices for the U.S. opener, which have dipped significantly over the past month, were the most eye-opening. Category 1 tickets were listed on the resale marketplace for $1,323, less than half of the exorbitant primary price, $2,735 — and even hundreds of dollars less than the Category 2 primary price, $1,940.
The cheapest Category 2 tickets listed for that match were $1,150, or $790 less than the price of the hundreds of Category 2 tickets available on FIFA’s primary platform over the past month.
A Category 3 ticket was also cheaper — $973 compared to $1,120.
FIFA, largely due to its initial prices, has been struggling to sell tickets to that U.S. match, on the second day of the World Cup at the opulent SoFi Stadium. With just over a month to go, it seemingly still has thousands of tickets that it hasn’t yet sold. A planning document dated April 10, and seen by The Athletic last month, showed 40,934 tickets purchased for that U.S.-Paraguay match, compared with 50,661 for the Iran-New Zealand match three days later at the same venue.
A FIFA spokesperson, responding at the time in a statement, called the publishing of those figures “misleading.” But The Athletic separately observed that, throughout the month of April, FIFA was seemingly only selling a few dozen U.S.-Paraguay tickets per day.
The declining resale prices have further complicated its efforts. There are now plenty of U.S.-Paraguay tickets available on all resale platforms for prices cheaper than the ones that FIFA has clung to.
If resale prices continue to fall across the board, similar dynamics will apply to a growing number of matches — albeit still a minority.
FIFA, which held back thousands of tickets for relative last-minute sales, has been releasing its remaining inventory in batches throughout the spring. It said on social media Wednesday that a new batch will become available Thursday at noon ET on its ticketing website.
It has not said if or when it plans to lower prices for matches that aren’t selling as well.
The coveted ones, meanwhile, remain more expensive on the secondary market. Even with resale prices declining, they are still higher than primary-market prices in every category for all knockout matches, and all group matches featuring at least one of Mexico, Argentina, Brazil, Portugal, Scotland and Spain.
Data for matches in Mexico is not included in the TicketData sample, in part because the resale of tickets for profit is barred by law in Mexico. FIFA, therefore, has limited the resale of tickets to “exchanges” at face value when the seller is in Mexico.
FIFA recently ran into a similar issue mid-stream in Toronto. A new Ontario law that went into effect last month caps resale prices at face value plus some taxes and service fees. FIFA, in response to the legislation, initially took all World Cup matches at Toronto’s BMO Field off its resale platform.
On Wednesday, they were back, but FIFA wrote in an email to Toronto ticket holders that they would not be allowed to list theirs “for a resale price that exceeds the original amount paid to FIFA Ticketing (including applicable taxes and fees), even if it was purchased on the FIFA Resale Marketplace at a higher price.”
Canada will play its opener at BMO Field against Bosnia and Herzegovina. That match, like U.S.-Paraguay, has been selling relatively slowly, and resale prices have fallen below FIFA’s asking prices of $2,240, $1,645 and $980 in the three main categories.
FIFA vice president Victor Montagliani, the Canadian president of Concacaf, assured The Athletic last week that the Canada curtain-raiser “will be sold out.”
“And I’m pretty sure the U.S. game will sell out,” he said.
FIFA spokespeople, in statements, have repeatedly said that “ticket sales for the FIFA World Cup remain strong with a high degree of interest for all matches.”
