The 2026 men’s FIFA World Cup was always going to be historic. This round of the world’s most-watched single-sport tournament was spread across three host countries and expanded to 48 participating nations for the first time. After two World Cups—Russia 2018 and Qatar 2022—which were heavily criticized by the Western media on human rights grounds and allegations of “sportswashing,” FIFA President Gianni Infantino may have hoped for a less controversial tournament. Instead, the 2026 World Cup has been marred by deep inequalities in access and affordability for participants and fans from the Global South. As a result, this World Cup represents a different form of sportswashing.
In the runup, much media attention was focused on the fact that citizens from four participating nations—Iran, Haiti, Senegal, and the Ivory Coast—faced U.S. travel bans, giving the lie to assurances by Infantino in 2025 that “those that qualify will be able to come with their fans” and that immigration issues would be “smooth.” Despite inventing and awarding U.S. President Donald Trump the “FIFA Peace Prize” as part of an effort to maintain close links with the White House, Infantino’s words were shown to be hollow: Washington denied visas to several members of Iran’s delegation, forcing the team to base itself in Mexico and fly into the U.S. for each of its three games in Los Angeles and Seattle.
Other high-profile cases of discrimination also blighted the World Cup. These included Somali refugee Omar Artan, who was denied entry to the U.S. despite possessing a visa, and Iraqi striker Aymen Hussein, who was questioned for almost seven hours upon arrival at Chicago’s O’Hare airport. UEFA, the governing body of European football, went on to appoint Artan the referee of its annual Super Cup game in August, while Hussein scored Iraq’s only goal in the World Cup.
The Democratic Republic of Congo’s famous “superfan” Michel Kuka Mbodalinga, who attends matches posing stock still as an iconic Kinshasa statue of the country’s founding father Patrice Lumumba, was denied a visa to the U.S.—a country complicit in Lumumba’s torture and assassination in 1961. Many fans from other nations, including defending champion Argentina, were also unable to travel to the U.S. to watch the games, depriving the tournament of much of its usual vibrancy.
The results of the discrimination over access, and FIFA’s supine surrender on the issue, became evident once the games began. Scottish, Dutch, and Norwegian supporters captured the imagination with choreographed displays of engaging banter, left-right shuffles, and Viking rows, but highlighted the fact that many of the visiting fans traveled from Europe rather than from the Global South. Sky-high ticket prices also served to exclude many less-affluent supporters from the games. Strikingly absent from most stadiums was the diversity of typical World Cup crowds—such as in Qatar in 2022, when tens of thousands of supporters from every corner of the world brought a month-long party to Doha, albeit helped by their concentration in a single urban location rather than spread across multiple host cities.
Performative Outrage
Qatar experienced intense criticism after it was awarded the World Cup in 2010. This led Doha to enact some labor reforms, such as no longer requiring migrant workers to obtain their employers’ permission to change jobs or leave the country; implementing a minimum wage; and adopting legal protections for domestic workers. While rights concerns persist in Qatar, consider the actions of the U.S. over the past 18 months: detaining approximately 400,000 immigrants, including over 6,000 children, killing at least 200 people in maritime strikes in the Caribbean and the Eastern Pacific, and launching a war of choice against Iran that left hundreds of civilians dead and inflicted significant damage on the world economy and global supply chains.
Yet the scale of the outcry over Qatar, especially in Europe, has far exceeded any criticism of the U.S. In 2022, the BBC chose not to air the opening ceremony, and instead ran a program critical of Qatar; this year it showed all three opening ceremonies. Outgoing British prime minister Keir Starmer slammed Doha’s human rights record, yet has kept quiet about rights issues in the U.S. Both the German and Norwegian teams publicly protested the Qatari organizers in 2021-22, but have kept quiet this time around.
It increasingly seems that the outrage at Russia and Qatar hosting the previous two World Cups was performative—a reflection of which countries are viewed as legitimate targets of criticism, and which countries are allowed to criticize (and to host major sports events).
In terms of accessibility and affordability, 2022 was as inclusive as 2026 is exclusive, and was far more a tournament for the world than a set of games for wealthy, privileged elites. Average prices for games in Qatar, across all categories of ticket, were up to ten times cheaper than in 2026, and started at US$11 for opening round games, while transport to and from venues was free of charge. This time around, fans worldwide have complained of being priced out of stadiums and have faced exorbitant charges to use public transport systems on game-days in many of the host cities.
The conduct of U.S. policymakers in 2026 has turned on its head the popular understanding of “sportswashing” as a mechanism by which governments use sport to improve their image. While the term has been criticized for its focus on authoritarian and non-Western states, a more nuanced understanding has also explored how the hosting of sports events can be used to project an image of strength internally and externally. This was the case for Russian President Vladimir Putin when his country organized the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi and the World Cup in 2018, and the same could be said of Trump in 2026.
Trump’s statements on Iran and pushback by members of his administration against criticism over visa denials indicate that the U.S. is hosting the tournament on his—rather than FIFA’s—terms, with scant concern for how the world sees it. This was clear in comments by Markwayne Mullin, the Secretary of Homeland Security, openly celebrating Iran’s failure to reach the knockout rounds. While his remarks were jarring to international ears, they tallied with a perception that this World Cup is aimed more at a domestic than an international audience, especially as the tournament coincides with the 250th anniversary of U.S. independence. Both the International Olympic Committee and the organizers of the Summer Olympics in Los Angeles in 2028, the final year of Trump’s second presidency, will likely be watching closely. Above all, the way the tournament has unfolded in the U.S. has reflected the administration’s indifference, even at times contempt, for the rest of the world, evidenced by Trump’s unprecedented pressure on FIFA to rescind a red card given to Flo Balogun which will have seismic consequences for sporting integrity going forward.
