A Toronto FC and City of Toronto FIFA 2026 World Cup advertisement is on display during a Major League Soccer game between Toronto FC and FC Cincinnati at BMO Field in Toronto, on April 11.Indrawan Kumala/Reuters
FIFA announced it would release new tickets for all 104 World Cup matches on Wednesday morning, even as sales for a number of highly anticipated games – including the first matches for Team Canada and Team USA – seem to have stalled amid complaints from fans over exorbitant prices.
The global soccer body said Tuesday it would release tickets across a number of pricing categories “depending on the match.” The tickets will go on sale Wednesday at 11 a.m. ET on fifa.com/tickets.
The newly announced tranche adds more confusion to the six-month sales process, during which FIFA has made sometimes conflicting statements about the availability and pricing of tickets.
In February, FIFA president Gianni Infantino told CNBC “every match is already sold out,” then added “we keep some tickets back for some last-minute sales, but every match is sold out.”
On April 1, FIFA opened what it is calling its Last-Minute Sales Phase, but on Tuesday it said that, after the new tranche drops on Wednesday, even more tickets would be released “on an ongoing basis up until the final” on July 19 “subject to availability.”
FIFA redraws the map on top-tier World Cup seating
Last week, Infantino told a conference in Washington that FIFA had sold about five million of approximately 6.5 million tickets he expected to be made available across the entire tournament. That would suggest only about 77 per cent of all tickets have been sold so far. FIFA did not respond to a request from The Globe and Mail on Tuesday for clarification on that matter.
The confusion has prompted some fans to proclaim on social media that they are waiting for prices to come down in the hopes that more seats will be made available.
Tickets to Canada’s first match, at Toronto’s BMO Field on June 12 against Bosnia-Herzegovina, now seem to be moving slowly. On April 14, The Globe and Mail found 1,433 unsold tickets on FIFA’s official sales site; one week later, on April 21, 1,305 were still unsold in a stadium that will seat 45,736.
That may be in part owing to high prices: The tickets were pegged at $2,300 for category 2 seats, $3,135 for category 1 seats, and $4,705 for what is known as front category 1, a tier of seats nearest to the field that was unveiled this month and rolled out without explanation from FIFA.
Toronto's BMO Field and its expanded seating will host six World Cup matches, starting with Canada (in black here, with Liam Millar contesting a ball against Tunisia in a March friendly) hosting Bosnia-Herzegovina on June 12.Vaughn Ridley/Getty Images
Those unsold tickets are separate from the 2,885 seats for the same match that were available on Tuesday afternoon through FIFA Marketplace, an official secondary market hub, where hopeful ticket holders were seeking up to tens of thousands of dollars for some individual seats. FIFA earns 30 per cent of all transactions on FIFA Marketplace: 15 per cent each from buyers and sellers.
Original tickets to Team USA’s first match, at SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles on June 12 against Paraguay, are also still readily available on FIFA’s primary ticket hub. On Tuesday afternoon, more than 2,000 tickets were available, at prices ranging from US$2,715 for category 2 to US$5,749 for front category 1. The stadium seats about 70,000.
FIFA did not respond to a request for the pricing of Wednesday’s ticket drop.
The surprise ticket drops have prompted fans to complain on social media that FIFA is holding back seats to create artificial scarcity and keep prices high. Asked for comment on Tuesday, a FIFA spokesperson sent a link to an interview FIFA president Gianni Infantino gave last week at the conference in Washington, which was curated by the media outlet Semafor.
In the interview, Infantino said FIFA was holding back some tickets “until the start of the tournament to give opportunities to latecomers.” He did not address the issue of artificial scarcity.