LUSAIL CITY, QATAR - DECEMBER 18: Lionel Messi of Argentina lifts the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 Winner's Trophy following the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 Final match between Argentina and France at Lusail Stadium on December 18, 2022 in Lusail City, Qatar. (Photo by Dan Mullan/Getty Images)
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For much of FIFA’s 2026 World Cup ticket price rollout, there has been skepticism that market demand truly merited FIFA’s unprecedentedly expensive ticket price scheme. In the last month, there are signs those doubts may be warranted.
According to the website TicketData, the price of the average resale ticket has fallen 23% in the last 30 days. (This is for games staged in the United States only, not co-host nations Canada and Mexico.)
That doesn’t mean tickets are becoming cheap, exactly; the average “get-in price” as of early Tuesday morning came in at $558, and the market has more or less flattened over the last week.
Even so, with three weeks until the tournament kicks off and a full two months until the final, it’s the clearest sign yet that FIFA’s pricing approach might not be as fundamentally sound as FIFA president Gianni Infantino has suggested.
That shouldn’t be a surprise to longtime observers of American soccer, who have seen fans’ options domestically increase at an exponential pace since the nation previously held the tournament in 1994. You need only look back at the 2025 FIFA Club World Cup, in which prices for the final games had to be dramatically reduced and still resulted in half-empty stadiums.
But going forward, potential consumers also need to understand that the market will carry enormous unknowns from here through the tournament itself, and may not behave like a typical American sporting event. (In most cases, resale prices drop slightly in the last two weeks before a game, but for the most in-demand events, those prices typically continue to increase through game time.)
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Here are some of the unusual forces that could shape that market in the next weeks.
The biggest reason for that is FIFA’s lack of transparency during the primary ticket selling process.
The sport’s governing body has released match tickets in several waves since the process began with a presale for Visa cardholders way back in September.
Some waves of that process were planned. But the last three since the beginning of April were a relative surprise, and FIFA has communicated that it will continue to release tickets in small batches up until – and perhaps even beyond when – the tournament starts.
So while analysts have tried to guess how many tickets might still be unreleased for particular matches, no one outside of FIFA’s organizational borders knows for sure. That means the resale market may be reacting not only to the current availability of tickets, but the projected potential future availability of them.
The dip we’re currently seeing could owe to anticipation of more ticket releases on the primary. If that expectation changes, that could drive secondary ticket prices higher closer to kickoff.
A second question is just how motivated FIFA is to actually fill every seat at the expense of leaving some profits on the table for matches that are less in demand.
Infantino has said FIFA could make available approximately 7 million total tickets for the tournament. The presumption, then, was that FIFA would indeed attempt to offload every single one sooner or later.
But since its official primary ticket sales process is already operating on a variable pricing model – with the prices of the overwhelming majority of matches rising through the additional waves of the process – it’s not unthinkable that FIFA could restrict supply even through kickoff to keep demand and overall primary market prices higher.
A year-by-year view of World Cup Attendance since 1970. (Source: Kaggle.com)
Chart made via Canva.com
The black eye that would come from empty seats probably isn’t as prominent as many would suspect. While overall resale ticket demand is increasingly mixed, the prices for the biggest teams remain very high, led by Colombia, Portugal and Brazil. And it’s those matches that will live in the collective consciousness of fans and observers, not the potential site of empty seats for matches like Cape Verde vs. Saudi Arabia in Houston or Austria vs. Jordan in Santa Clara.
Additionally, all-time records are more less already guaranteed. FIFA could literally leave nearly half its ticket inventory unsold and still set a new record for the most-attended tournament in history. That mark is currently still standing from the 1994 tournament in the U.S., when almost 3.6 million fans attended across 52 games (half the 104 that will be played in this largest-ever World Cup).
The last key question is just how many fans currently holding tickets may find themselves unable to attend for other reasons, particularly if they are traveling from abroad.
Significant travel restrictions – including outright bans on travelers who are citizens of participants Iran and Haiti – as well as enormous spikes in potential travel costs could make getting to games historically difficult for those who obtain tickets through official channels.
That could create a scenario where a significant number of ticketholders who are trying to obtain visas or flights continue to hold onto tickets until late in the game. If they conclude in the final days or weeks that the ordeal is logistically impossible or prohibitively expensive, that could tank prices on the resale market far more than we’ve seen so far.
The U.S. government has taken some steps to try and avoid this process, creating a FIFA Pass system to expedite visa reviews for ticketholders, and removing the requirement for a $15,000 travel bond for travelers from Algeria, Cabo Verde, Côte d’Ivoire, Senegal, and Tunisia.
Hotel prices and demand in World Cup host cities have also caved in recent weeks, which could potentially ward off this scenario by allowing for more affordable last-minute travel planning.
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