The U.S. Is Co-Hosting the FIFA World Cup. But Much of the World Can’t Attend.

Yes. Last June, the Trump administration enacted a travel ban that fully or partially bars citizens from nineteen countries from entering the United States. The administration has steadily added travel restrictions since, with the most recent decree in January 2026 halting immigrant visa processing for seventy-five countries.

With the United States set to host both the men’s World Cup this year and the 2028 Summer Olympics, the administration at first said that athletes, coaches, and support staff for those tournaments, among a select few other sporting events, would be exempt from travel restrictions. However, the State Department later clarified that “only a small subset of travelers” would qualify for such an exemption, suggesting that groups which would not could include fans and foreign spectators, media, and corporate sponsors from countries restricted by the Trump administration’s travel policies.

So far, four countries whose teams have qualified for the World Cup fall under Trump’s travel ban: Haiti, Iran, the Ivory Coast, and Senegal. Fans who are nationals of those countries will be unable to attend World Cup games hosted by the United States. Many other qualified countries are on the Trump administration’s visa pause list, including Egypt, Ghana, Jordan, Morocco, Uruguay, and Uzbekistan, which only applies to immigration visas. “That shouldn’t stop fans from those countries from getting tourist visas,” CFR immigration expert Ted Alden explained, “but you can certainly expect that anybody coming from those countries is going to face an extra level of scrutiny.”

Another hurdle is cost. Nonimmigrant visa holders from participating countries including Algeria, Cape Verde, the Ivory Coast, and Senegal will be required to post a $15,000 bond to attend U.S. games, adding what could be a prohibitive financial hurdle for fans. Players may not be exempt, though State Department rules allow for evaluation on a case-by-case basis.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) may also ramp up screenings for visitors from countries not subjected to current travel restrictions. One of its latest proposals would require applicants from forty-two countries—including close U.S. partners—to hand over troves of online data. “This is going to dissuade a lot of people,” Alden told CFR. “Europeans are not going to want to give five years of social media history to the U.S. government.” 

High costs, intense application processes, and bans aside, Alden suggested another barrier could be psychological: “Are people going to be scared to enter the United States?” 

Another consequence of the travel restrictions could play out in the psychology of the games themselves, CFR’s Obadare contended. “There’s something about having your fans in the stadium, rooting for you, shouting their heads off,” he said, remembering when fans from his home country, Nigeria, flocked to Atlanta for the 1994 Olympics. “At the end of the day, sports is just a spectacle. And part of that spectacle is the people in the stands. If you don’t have those people in the stands, it’s not the same thing.”

What about safety at the tournament?

Several aspects of the games are under scrutiny when it comes to perceived threats to safety:  

Venues. Security during major sporting events is always a concern. In the United States, Congress approved $625 million for the eleven U.S. host cities—which still left a $150 million gap for each, the cities claim.

Trump has threatened to move the locations of some matches after deeming certain liberal-leaning cities “unsafe,” though FIFA later said he could not do that. He also threatened to pull federal funding for any of the host cities that enforce sanctuary policies, including Boston, Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco, and Seattle. 

Intelligence briefings from U.S. officials and FIFA obtained by Reuters warned on March 20 that the potential for extremist attacks on the games, fan events, or transportation infrastructure—as well as civil unrest—has grown because of heightened tensions over Trump’s immigration policies and war in Iran.

In late March, U.S. officials preparing for the games also expressed concern that the $625 million in security funds had still not been disbursed to host cities. 

Meanwhile, cartel violence in Mexico has already affected one host stadium. When a Mexican operation, assisted by U.S. intelligence, assassinated drug lord El Mencho in February, chaos erupted in Guadalajara as organized crime groups set fire to public infrastructure and attacked vehicles on the roads. The unrest has affected tourism in the area.

No significant safety concerns have emerged about host stadiums or cities in Canada.

Enforcement. FIFA received 145 reports regarding human rights concerns during the 2025 Club World Cup, according to the New York Times. Many of the reports were related to an alleged presence by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) or U.S. Customs and Border Protection, while others were related to hate speech. DHS denied an enforcement presence at that tournament, but earlier this year ICE announced it planned to play a “key part” in World Cup security.

That might concern some participating countries. Germany and the United Kingdom have discouraged U.S. travel due to DHS enforcement, while Ecuador has condemned ICE immigration raids. Meanwhile, Italian officials objected when the United States planned to send ICE to help with enforcement at Milan’s Winter Olympics in February amid aggressive crackdowns in Minnesota, with the mayor of Milan calling ICE a “militia” and saying the agency was not welcome. Congress has put forward a bill to require that no federal funding be used on immigration enforcement at the World Cup over safety concerns for attendees and travelers.

Alden believes ICE does not have a reason to be at the summer games. “World Cup fans are not likely overstayers, for the most part,” he said. “This is a world-stage event, and I don’t think that it would make sense to disrupt it with a heavy ICE presence.” 

Player safety. A few days into the Iran war, Iranian soccer officials said they would not participate in the World Cup, while Trump said it would not be “appropriate” for the Iranian team to come for their “life and safety.”

The country’s sports minister later said that the team would “boycott” the United States but not the World Cup—and is reportedly in talks with FIFA to move the team’s three U.S.-based games to Mexico instead. FIFA has the ability to move the matches, but has so far expressed an unwillingness to budge. However, Iran has not issued a formal withdrawal to FIFA, and Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has said her country would willingly host the Iranian matches.

Aside from heated sentiments, the actual temperature is another safety issue. Several host cities, such as Los Angeles and Mexico City, are located in areas that pose a high risk of heat-stress injury to players. (Other stadiums, such as those in Atlanta and Arlington, Texas, are temperature-controlled.) Last year’s Club World Cup games saw midafternoon kickoffs that led to heat exhaustion and have caused concern that players will face similar conditions this year without an adequate response from FIFA and host countries.

Is there a risk of a boycott?

Calls to boycott the World Cup have come from soccer coaches, politicians, and civilians, including the heads of twenty European soccer federations.

But the likelihood of most governments—even those highly critical of current U.S. policies or the 2026 games—committing to a boycott in the sense of withholding their teams is incredibly low, Obadare said. “At the end of the day, [players] want that shot.”

Boycotts from individuals or fan groups are more likely. Some have reportedly begun selling their tickets, although the Los Angeles Times reported in early February that FIFA stands to gain from these transactions by taking a 15 percent fee for both selling and buying the resold tickets.

Boycotts have swirled around World Cup games before. In 1964, for example, more than a dozen African teams withdrew from the tournament in protest of FIFA’s regional qualification policies. Yet several experts do not see the latest movement gaining traction: “I don’t consider a broader boycott likely, barring unforeseen future developments,” Alden said. But, he acknowledged, a lot could happen in the two months left until the kickoff, “which is a long time, given the multiple disruptions in the world at the moment.”

What is FIFA’s stance?

FIFA policies hold human rights guidelines in line with the United Nations, and require World Cup host countries to do the same.

The 2026 games are the first to have human rights criteria embedded in the bidding process. Each city published a plan declaring the ways it would promote human rights. Among several other measures, Atlanta pledges to raise hourly worker wages for the tournament to $17.50 and Dallas highlights that it will look out for human trafficking, while Vancouver has a “zero-tolerance” policy for “all acts of discrimination.”

However, “the deteriorating human rights situation in the United States has put those commitments at risk,” Andrea Florence, executive director of the Sport & Rights Alliance, told Amnesty. 

It is not the first time FIFA and tournament hosts have come under scrutiny. At the 2025 Club World Cup games, FIFA canceled long-standing antidiscrimination messaging, despite instances of fans chanting slurs. During the 2022 Qatar World Cup, protesters were removed from games for being outspoken on issues, such as Iran’s “Women, Life, Freedom” movement, while migrant workers building infrastructure for the Qatar games died because of unsafe working conditions. Worker deaths were also reported in the buildup to prior World Cups hosted by Russia, Brazil, and South Africa.

In spite of critics’ concerns about human rights in the United States, FIFA will try to make the games a success, Obadare said. He noted that the World Cup brings in nearly all of the organization’s income, with the Qatar games in 2022 bringing in 83 percent of FIFA’s revenue from the four-year cycle following the 2018 games. He said that FIFA would work to address concerns by encouraging the U.S. government to let visitors in more easily (for example, with a designated FIFA Pass).

At the same time, FIFA is also unlikely to offend a host nation by speaking out against the Trump administration’s policies. On the contrary, FIFA President Gianni Infantino awarded Trump the FIFA Peace Prize last year for his “tireless efforts to promote peace” in various global conflicts. Infantino has met with Trump at least a dozen times, and attended White House task force meetings in the lead-up to the games this year.

Are there other geopolitical issues surrounding the games?

Trump has openly discussed the World Cup’s potential for sports diplomacy. The State Department’s “Sports Diplomacy Playbook,” seen by Politico, maps out how Washington could leverage the event to advance foreign investment and soft policy aims. Trump expressed interest in revoking a ban on Russia playing in the World Cup that was implemented in 2022 after its invasion of Ukraine, saying it could be a “good incentive” for Moscow to end the war—a stance FIFA’s president has agreed with. Meanwhile, calls for Israel to be banned over its war in Gaza have been ignored, with the State Department confirming it would “work to fully stop any effort” to ban Israel.

On a lighter note, at least four teams are stepping onto World Cup grass for the first time ever: Cape Verde, Curaçao, Jordan, and Uzbekistan. With these four debutants and the expanded forty-eight-team format, it’s likely that there will be several games involving two teams that have never played each other before, providing new arenas to watch for both friendly competition and displays of soft power. Past countries that debuted at the games that made a splash in the stands include Iceland and Panama in 2018 and Ghana in 2006. That recognition, Obadare said, is often far from having a long-term diplomatic effect outside the stadium. As he put it, “there’s no cost to rooting for minnows”—but it can still open viewers’ eyes to new cultural exchanges.

Meanwhile, in practical terms, FIFA organizers will be taking notes on the first-ever jointly hosted tournament among the North American neighbors. This year is a test case for the shared hosting model, with the 2030 World Cup set to be split among Morocco, Portugal, and Spain. While this year’s hosts have pledged to work together, Canada and Mexico have both experienced shifting postures with the United States during Trump’s second presidency that are affecting trade and cross-border travel, underscoring the effect that geopolitics can have on the games. 

Without a doubt, given all the dynamics set to unfold this summer, Obadare said, “it will be a different tournament overall.”