FIFA says it received more than 500 million requests for 2026 World Cup tickets in the month-long application window that closed on Tuesday.
The window opened shortly after December’s World Cup draw and schedule release, and allowed fans to apply for tickets to specific matches, in specific categories, at specific prices. FIFA will now conduct random draws for each of the World Cup’s 104 matches and award tickets to the selected applicants in February.
FIFA already sold around 2 million tickets in October and November before the schedule was set. It has around 4 or 5 million tickets remaining across the tournament.
The 500-plus million requests — which likely represent demand for more than 1 billion tickets, with each request being for 1-4 tickets — suggest the World Cup as a whole is oversubscribed, though a match-by-match breakdown might tell a slightly different story.
FIFA said on Wednesday that the most requested matches were, in order:
- Colombia vs. Portugal
- Mexico vs. Korea Republic
- The World Cup final
- Mexico vs. South Africa (the World Cup opener)
- The round-of-32 match in Toronto on July 2, which will likely feature either Portugal or Colombia vs. the runner-up in England’s group
FIFA has not, however, said how many requests there were for each of those matches or others, and a spokesman declined to provide more specific data.
Industry experts always expected huge demand for latter-round games and those involving teams like Mexico, Argentina, Colombia and Portugal; but they’ve been skeptical that less prestigious matches, such as Cape Verde vs. Saudi Arabia, will attract tens of thousands of ticket requests at FIFA’s prices ($140-$450 for those lower-tier games).
FIFA has implicitly used the overwhelming demand to justify its ticket prices, which fans have derided as “extortionate” and “despicable.” The prices, across the board, from the group stage through to the final, are multiple times higher than the equivalent ticket prices at any previous World Cup. They have deterred some fans, both in North America and abroad, who are resigned to watching the tournament from home on TV.
Others, though, jumped at the prices. During presales in October and November, much of FIFA’s allotted inventory quickly sold out. In response to the demand, FIFA raised prices, but even the hiked prices are significantly lower than current prices on resale sites such as StubHub or Vivid Seats — which, in many ways, are a more accurate, responsive and fluid measure of demand.
Those resale prices could fall for less desirable games closer to the start of the World Cup, as early buyers look to offload tickets that they purchased before matches were known.
But prices also could rise for prominent games beginning in February, when fans will learn whether their ticket applications were successful — and when millions of unsuccessful applicants will realize that the resale market is now their only route to tickets.
In anticipation of that secondary-market demand, some of the more than 500 million requests have likely come from scalpers — people who will purchase tickets and then resell them at a profit.
It’s unclear how thoroughly, if at all, FIFA has attempted to block those scalpers from the ticket lottery. In September, FIFA officials said they would undertake a “data cleansing” or “data scrubbing” process to weed out bots and prevent advanced scalping operations from gaming the system. Its Wednesday release said that “each application [was] validated by unique credit card data,” but some applications could still be discarded for violating household limits or other application requirements.
It’s also unclear if FIFA will award all of its remaining tickets to the millions of people who applied over the past month, or if it will withhold some tickets for one last sales phase in the spring.
FIFA will begin notifying fans of the random draw’s results on or after February 5. Applications can be successful (all tickets granted), partially successful (some tickets granted) or unsuccessful.
The tournament kicks off June 11 in Mexico City, and will conclude July 19 in New Jersey. Sixteen cities across the U.S., Canada and Mexico will host the 104 matches.
