World Cup
Tariq Zehawi / NorthJersey.com / USA TODAY Network / Imagn Images
Tickets to the 2026 World Cup are now on sale, but that doesn’t mean you can simply go buy them.
The World Cup ticket process is a labyrinth of lotteries, long waits, fluctuating prices and frustration. So, the following is an attempt to explain it.
The first lottery opened in September. The next route to tickets — the second “phase” of a four-phase rollout — begins October 27. Here’s what you need to know about that route and others to the 2026 tournament, which will take place next June and July across 16 cities in the United States, Canada and Mexico.
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There are multiple avenues to World Cup tickets. They come with varying degrees of certainty and cost. They are:
On Oct. 27, likely at 11 a.m. ET.
But, like with the first lottery, you don’t need to rush to your smartphone or computer at a specific time that day. You can enter anytime between then and Oct. 31. No preference will be given to earlier applicants, FIFA says.
The upcoming lottery will likely mirror the first lottery. Millions of people will create a “FIFA ID” account and apply. FIFA will randomly select a minority of them, notify the lucky few via email, and give them a 24- or 48-hour time slot to purchase tickets — “subject to availability.”
FIFA said it made around 1 million tickets — roughly 15% of the 2026 World Cup’s total inventory — available in the first phase, across all 104 matches. For the World Cup final, the allotment of tickets sold out within hours; by the end of the third time slot, standard allotments for the semifinals, quarterfinals, round of 16, opener and other games — including almost all games in Canada and Mexico — were also gone, and never replenished.
The second phase will likely be similar, though FIFA could tweak the process.
Not great.
FIFA said that over 4.5 million people entered the first lottery. The second one, like the first, will be open to everyone — diehard soccer fans, casual sports fans, profit-seeking scalpers and more. If another 1 million tickets are available, and each lottery winner can purchase up to 40, the percentage of entrants chosen will again be small.
FIFA has not said how many fans will be picked, in part because it notifies winners on a rolling basis. Your chances depend on how many people chosen before you actually buy tickets, and how many tickets they buy. Rejection notices won’t be sent until the end of the phase.
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At the onset of sales, according to fans who sent screenshots and data to The Athletic, tickets were priced as follows:
Those prices, though, are subject to change via FIFA’s “variable pricing” model. In fact, some already did during the first presale phase. The Athletic has been tracking prices, via screenshots sent by fans, and identified at least 16 games that were subject to at least one price increase in the opening week of sales.
It’s not known how, if at all, prices might change before or during the second phase.
FIFA prefers the term “variable pricing” instead of “dynamic pricing” because, it says, prices don’t jump algorithmically or automatically when a carefully-programmed computer senses demand. The adjustments are instead made by humans — though automation is part of the process, an official acknowledged in September.
Although some slight adjustments — roughly 5% increases — were made in the October sales period, the expectation is that bigger jumps, and more adjustments, will be made in the third lottery phase, after the Dec. 5 World Cup draw. At that point, matchups will be set and demand will increase for games involving popular teams. (It could also decrease, and prices could fall, for games involving less popular teams.)
Even in these early phases, before matchups and team locations are set, before some nations have even qualified, FIFA is offering “team-specific” packages.
If you’re selected in a lottery and want to follow, say, England through the tournament, you could pay $930 for a Category 1 ticket to England’s first game, and another $930 for the second game, and another $930 for the third game — wherever and whenever those games are. (It’d be $700-$705 per Category 2 ticket, and $320-$325 apiece in Category 3.)
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Prices were similar for the likes of Argentina and Brazil, less for mid-tier teams like Japan and Turkey ($745 per match in Category 1, $560 in Category 2, $260 in Category 3); and less still for unheralded teams or those who likely won’t qualify. If the team you select doesn’t ultimately qualify, you’ll be reimbursed, FIFA says.
You could also go through your team’s national federation, or wait for what FIFA calls “conditional supporter tickets (for supporters who want to reserve a seat for one of their team’s potential matches in a knockout round),” which “are expected to be available closer to the tournament,” it said in a September release.
U.S. sports fans are accustomed to buying specific seats in a specific row and section. For major international soccer tournaments like the World Cup, though, tickets are typically divided into three or four categories, and fans must buy them without knowing the exact location of their seats.
For the 2026 World Cup, a Category 1 ticket could be anywhere in the lower bowl or somewhere on the second deck of an NFL stadium. The Category 2 sections, for the most part, are on the upper deck along the sideline. Category 3 seats are on the upper deck behind/above the end line. Category 4 is tiny slivers of corner sections on the upper deck, or whatever seats are farthest away from the field.
FIFA has not publicly released color-coded stadium maps showing which sections belong to which categories, like it did for Qatar 2022, but it has shown those maps to ticket buyers in the first presale phase. Fans have compiled those maps here and here.
Be patient.
More lotteries are coming. And more importantly, tickets will surely be available on resale platforms. They might be costly, but probably not as costly as they appear right now — because, for many (though not all) sporting events, prices tend to fall closer to the event.
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For buyers, “oftentimes waiting is beneficial,” Matt Ferrel, a TickPick executive, told The Athletic. “If people have tickets and aren’t able to attend, they’re setting the price high to recoup whatever they invested in the game, but what they ultimately want to do is offload the ticket.”
Most sellers and buyers will likely head to FIFA’s official resale platform, unless other sites like StubHub offer to take lower fees. (FIFA will charge both the buyer and the seller a 15% fee on every sale on its platform.)
FIFA can’t fully stop those unauthorized sites from accepting and advertising World Cup tickets, but it has warned fans against buying from them — because doing so carries some degree of uncertainty. Those sites can’t 100% guarantee that you’ll actually get your tickets. They threaten to impose penalties on the seller if a re-sold ticket ultimately isn’t delivered to the buyer, and promise to compensate the buyer in a variety of ways if that happens. But nothing prevents a fan or speculator from selling tickets that they don’t actually have.
FIFA, on the other hand, can offer that guarantee. World Cup chief operating officer Heimo Schirgi said in September that FIFA’s platform would be “a safe and secure and regulated environment for fans to be able to resell their tickets.”
FIFA officials say you can buy up to four tickets per match and up to 40 tickets across the entire tournament per household.
There’s been confusion surrounding what, exactly, qualifies as a “household.” FIFA cleared up some of that confusion last month.
If you’d like to go to a game with a group of more than four people, you’ll need to have multiple people register, apply, and buy tickets with distinct FIFA IDs. (Though if the entire group of five-plus people lives in the same household, you might be out of luck.)
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Not yet. These early ticket lotteries are open to all fans, from the co-host countries and abroad.
A World Cup official said in September that there have been discussions about sales phases that would specifically incentivize fans from the three co-host countries, but those discussions remain ongoing.
At previous World Cups, there were “Category 4” allotments reserved for residents of the host country at lower price points. But in those countries, the average citizen had less purchasing power than the typical World Cup tourist. Here, FIFA won’t need to give Americans a discount. It might, though, offer some sort of priority access in a later phase.
No. FIFA has always clarified: “A match ticket does not guarantee admission to a host country.”
The U.S. government has no known plans to ease its visa application process or entry requirements for World Cup fans.
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Henry Bushnell is a senior writer for The Athletic covering soccer. He previously covered a variety of sports and events, including World Cups and Olympics, for Yahoo Sports. He is based in Washington, D.C. Follow Henry on Twitter @HenryBushnell