One year out, World Cup 2026 already looking OUT OF REACH for many fans
Will the 2026 World Cup in the U.S. Be the Global Celebration we’ve come to know—or a guarded Door open only to fans of certain countries?
In just over a year, the largest World Cup in history will kick off across North America! Forty-eight nations competing. Three countries hosting across sixteen cities. The promise of an unforgettable summer of football. But behind the hype of host city posters and FIFA’s festive branding, a sobering reality is beginning to take hold: the 2026 edition, particularly the majority of it taking place in the United States, may not be the international party fans and fellow footy travelers have come to expect from the World Cup.
As footy travelers ourselves—fans who chase the game across borders and cultures—we’ve always believed that the World Cup is about more than the matches. It’s about chatting with supporters from Wales on a Doha metro, or a Cameroonian grandma who carries a photo of Samuel Eto’o in her purse. It’s about dancing with Argentines in the streets of Moscow, or sharing beers with open-minded Saudis in a fan zone. But if you’re a fan hoping to do something similar in 2026—particularly if you hail from Latin America, Africa, or parts of Asia—just getting into the U.S. may be your biggest hurdle.
Partying with Colombian fans on Copacabana Beach during Brasil 2014
Visa Wait Times: A Bureaucratic Red Card
Let’s start with the numbers. According to U.S. State Department data cited by The Athletic’s Adam Crafton back in February, visa interview wait times for World Cup-eligible countries are staggering: over 700 days in Colombia, 560 days in Turkey, 332 days in Morocco. Even Mexico—co-host of the tournament—can face wait times of over a year for tourist visas.
For fans from these countries, that’s longer than the qualification cycle itself. And while citizens of 42 nations (mostly in Europe, plus Australia, Japan, and South Korea) can use the ESTA visa waiver system, that still leaves more than half of the likely qualifying nations requiring a traditional visa. We wouldn’t call this a simple administrative issue. For those of us who’ve witnessed the party that the World Cup can be, it’s an existential threat to the international character of that party, and the tournament itself. And the issue doesn’t seem like it will be resolved anytime soon.
Former U.S. diplomat Travis Murphy was quoted recently, summing it up bluntly: “Wait times are only going to go up, not down.”
A Tale of Two Trumps
To understand how we got here, it’s worth looking back—and comparing two versions of President Donald Trump, a man who’s flip-flopped more than a pair of Havaianas at Copacabana lately.
In 2018, when the United States, Canada, and Mexico were awarded the World Cup, Trump’s administration pledged that fans from all nations would be able to enter “without discrimination.” But that was then. Fast-forward seven years to 2025, and Trump’s second-term administration is pursuing immigration policies that, in the words of Human Rights Watch, “fundamentally undermine the inclusive spirit of the World Cup.”
We’re already seeing signs of that undermining:
A hiring freeze at the State Department has left embassies understaffed.
The newly appointed head of government “efficiency,” Elon Musk, is cutting resources that directly affect visa processing.
Executive orders have revived the spirit of Trump’s first-term travel bans, including enhanced screening for people from Muslim-majority and “high-risk” countries.
And while Trump himself has continued to publicly praise FIFA and the tournament—referring to Infantino as “the king of soccer” and pledging that travel will be “seamless”—those assurances aren’t aligning with actual policy or execution on the ground. During a World Cup task force meeting, apparently Trump also promised, “It’s going to be very special.” And it probably will. Just not the same way it’s been special in the past.
Celebrating with locals & visitors on Moscow’s Nikolskaya St during Russia 2018
BELIEVE IT OR NOT, IT’s NOT FIFA’s FAULT
In past tournaments, FIFA has worked with host countries to streamline the visa process. Qatar’s Hayya card in 2022 doubled as both a fan ID and visa. Russia 2018 had a similar approach with its Fan ID. For 2026, FIFA hoped to implement something comparable, or at least a shared visa process across Canada, the U.S., and Mexico.
The U.S. said no.
Concerns over national security, political optics, and domestic immigration sensitivities have blocked these proposals—even during the Biden administration. So despite a Human Right Watch call for “clear benchmarks and timelines for policy changes,” and with immigration legislation notoriously difficult to pass in U.S. Congress, the odds of a last-minute reform look pretty slim.
Internally, FIFA has appointed Josh Wodka, a former immigration official from the Biden administration, to head up its efforts in this area. But as reported by The Athletic, Wodka’s prior affiliation with Kamala Harris and the Democratic Party has raised eyebrows in the current Trump-led White House. Go figure!
Safety, Discrimination, and Human Rights
It’s not just visas. Human Rights Watch’s letter to FIFA laid out broader concerns about how fans, players, and media might be treated once inside U.S. borders.
Whether or not their concerns are legit, HRW is pointing to:
Risk of detention or interrogation at airports and land crossings
Chilling restrictions on free speech and protest rights
New or proposed laws targeting LGBTQ+ communities
Unclear redress mechanisms if fans are denied entry or mistreated
On face value, it’s a robust—and worrying—list. What might be most worrying though, is that the current U. S. approach to ‘foreign entries’ seems to stand in contrast to FIFA’s own human rights policy, which promises to “apply effective leverage” to protect inclusion at its events. To the ignorant observer (us, not you—we don’t really know what’s goin on behind the scenes), it’s starting to look like a passive aggressive pissing match. Question is, who likes the golden showers more? Who will win out come next summer?
Despite mounting pressure, including from members of the U.S. Travel Association, there’s little evidence that FIFA is demanding meaningful action or accountability from the U.S. government. As Crafton reported in The Athletic, even meetings between FIFA and the State Department have often excluded key decision-makers like Secretary of State Marco Rubio. But who knows? Maybe Infantino’s late arrival to the recent FIFA congress in Paraguay, because he was meeting with Trump and World Cup 2034 organizers in the Middle East, is a sign that FIFA is doing all it can to move the needle on this issue?
A Party for Some, But Not All?
So what’s the likely outcome? We haven’t even mentioned the dynamic-pricing model that FIFA is reportedly moving to in place of its fixed price system from previous World Cup tournaments yet! Just because you can access the US, doesn’t mean you’ll easily get or be able to afford a match ticket… but that will have to be another post.
In simplest terms, fans from visa-waiver countries will probably get the World Cup they’re hoping for. Americans, Canadians, Europeans, Australians—they’ll fill the stadiums and snap selfies at the Statue of Liberty with few bureaucratic barriers.
But fans from countries like Colombia, Nigeria, Morocco, and Iran? Many might not make it. Others will be denied at the interview stage. Others may not even try, discouraged by long wait times, unclear requirements, or the risk of rejection.
In fact, some within the State Department have wondered whether we’ll all see an “America-first” approach to ticketing and tourism suggested by the current administration, where filling stadiums with domestic or visa-waiver travelers becomes the de facto strategy—something that directly conflicts with FIFA’s (and The Footy Travelers’) idea of using football to unite the world. All of it.
This won’t be just a loss for those locked out. It would be a loss for all of us. Because a World Cup without the full global flavor—without drums from Brazil, face paint from Senegal, or chants and post-match cleanups from Japan—isn’t a real World Cup. It’s a hollowed out, corporate version driven by bottom lines. And maybe even some antithetical, generalized xenophobia??? World Cup 2026 runs the risk right now of being a regional showcase (wolf) in global (sheep’s) clothing.
Connecting with Japanese fans after a game during Qatar 2022
What We’re Doing About It (and How You Can Join)
Part of being a footy traveler is not just being a passive, apathetic observer. Calling ourselves The Footy Travelers, we truly do believe in the power of football to unite across borders—and that includes showing up in creative ways when others won’t… or can’t.
So for World Cup 2026, we’re building two unforgettable experiences:
Experience 1: The Border-Hopping Tour: USA, Canada & Mexico
We’re planning a curated trip that spans all three host nations—because if visas shut some fans out of the U.S., maybe we can still meet them in Canada or Mexico, where visa policies are often more accessible and fan zones more inclusive. And let’s be honest: who wouldn’t want to catch a match in the (renovated) Azteca?!
Experience 2: The Home Fan Experience: Watching the World Cup Abroad
We’re also designing a second trip—a journey outside North America to experience the World Cup energy in places where footy fever is untamed. Imagine watching Argentina play from a Buenos Aires bar. Or cheering on Ghana from a packed street party in Accra. How about a second border-hopping tour to watch Round of 32 games through the Quarterfinals in places like Germany, France, and Spain? For some fans, this will be where the real tournament spirit lives in 2026. The details on which approach we take for this experience are forthcoming, so read on for how to be the first to find out about this trip.
A Hopeful Footnote
Despite the challenges, and all the ‘raging against the machine’ we witness from others talking about this issue, we haven’t given up hope. A lot can change in a year. Policies can shift. Pressures can mount. We’ll be keeping tabs, amplifying stories, and building a community of travelers who believe that football is for everyone, everywhere. Because the World Cup isn’t just a sporting event—it’s a chance to reflect the best of humanity.
Stay tuned for updates on our World Cup 2026 trips—and if you want to be the first to know when spots open up, sign up for our newsletter.
If you’ve got your own thoughts on the visa situation or ideas for where we should watch matches abroad—drop us a line or shoot us a DM on Instagram. We’re always down to talk travel, footy, and how to make the game a truly global and unifying one.
(Disclosure: We often ideate, draft, and/or refine content with the aid of artificial intelligence tools, and edit & revise it to reflect our own personalities & intended message.)