A giant model of the official Trionda pro match ball for the FIFA 2026 World Cup is displayed inside the Adidas store in New York on Jan. 7.Mike Segar/Reuters
Soccer fans hoping to snag a seat for this year’s World Cup have less than 24 hours before FIFA closes the application window on Tuesday morning for its third and largest phase of sales, but they’ll face stiff odds after the global soccer body said the demand for tickets had shattered all previous records.
And most fans will have to pay top dollar if their application is chosen in the Random Selection Draw, despite a last-minute move by FIFA to soothe critics by introducing a discount tier for official supporters of national teams that will make about 1 per cent of seats for every match available for $88 each.
FIFA announced in late November it had sold almost two million tickets during the first two phases of sales. It expects to sell up to seven million tickets across the 104 matches of the entire tournament.
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It opened applications for its Random Selection Draw process on Dec. 11 after announcing the schedule and the stadiums where each of the 48 teams will play during the initial group stage. (A handful of teams have yet to be determined through qualifiers, including which country will play Canada in its first match, on June 12 at Toronto’s BMO Field.)
Under the Random Selection Draw, which is accepting applications until Jan. 13 at 11 a.m. ET, fans can submit a request for up to four tickets per game and 40 tickets in total, specifying their desired category of seats. (As an example: Canada’s second group stage match, on June 18 in Vancouver against Qatar, is priced at $980 for Category 1, or the best non-VIP seats in the house; $700 for Category 2; and $370 for Category 3.)
After the requests have been received, FIFA will conduct a randomized draw to determine if a fan gets to purchase their entire allocation of ticket requests, some of it, or none; their credit card will be automatically charged accordingly, beginning Feb. 9. FIFA has instructed fans to ensure their credit cards have limits that are high enough to ensure payments will not be cancelled, given that the totals for some purchases could run into the tens of thousands of dollars.
On Dec. 29, FIFA said in a news release it had already received requests for more than 150 million tickets, which made the tournament “30 times oversubscribed” for the approximately five million remaining tickets, and was “3.4 times more than the overall number of spectators who have attended the 964 matches that make up all 22 editions of the competition combined since 1930.”
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That kind of demand enabled FIFA to raise prices by double-digit percentages using what it calls “variable pricing.” When tickets for Canada’s first game went on sale in October, they were priced at $2,440; $1,735; and $1,000, including tax, depending on the category of seat. FIFA is now pricing those same tickets at $3,035 (an increase of 24.5 per cent); $2,205 (27 per cent); and $1,300 (30 per cent).
“This is above a lot of people’s price points,” said Alex Ho, the executive director of The Voyageurs, a Canada Soccer fan support club with about 3,000 active members across the country. He noted that many fans of Team Canada who don’t live in either the Greater Toronto Area or the Lower Mainland will have to pay for flights and the same “eye-watering” prices for accommodations as those attending from other countries. “That really adds up,” he said.
Canada’s other two group stage games, in Vancouver on June 18 and 24, saw even sharper increases, jumping from $665, $495 and $230 during the first phase of sales to $980 in the current phase (an increase of 47 per cent), $700 (up 41 per cent) and $370 (up 61 per cent).
Fans and Canadian soccer players shared their excitement for who the country will face at the World Cup during an event to mark the group stage draw in Toronto on Friday.
The Canadian Press
The steep prices across the tournament prompted Football Supporters Europe, a fan organization, to accuse FIFA last month of a “monumental betrayal of the tradition of the World Cup.” Days later, FIFA announced a new “Supporter Entry Tier” for fans of each qualified team, with tickets priced at $88, or US$60.
Those tickets – for seats in the remotest regions of stadiums – will be carved out of the allocations that teams can reserve for their supporters at games. Each team gets eight per cent of what is known as the “purchasable ticket allocation” to each game it is in; the discounted tier will make up 10 per cent of that amount.
As an example, if Canada Soccer gets an allocation of 3,600 tickets at Toronto’s BMO Field that its official supporters can purchase for each game (out of the approximately 44,315 total seats that FIFA currently lists as the stadium’s capacity), there will be about 350 of the $88 tickets. At Vancouver’s BC Place, which FIFA currently lists as having a capacity of 48,821, Canada Soccer will get about 3,900 tickets for its official supporters; about 390 of those will be at the discounted tier.
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Canada Soccer’s allocation is reserved for fans in its CanadaRED supporters program, which it said last month had nearly 143,000 members. The program has seven membership tiers, from free to a $5,000 annual fee, with each successive tier offering an additional chance of winning the right to buy tickets across a series of draws the organization is running. Only people who had registered by midnight on Sunday night were eligible for the draws.
In Canada, the Supporter Entry Tier discount tickets are being distributed only to members of the Voyageurs who also belong to CanadaRED. If they are chosen, via a random selection draw, they have the ability to purchase only a single ticket. Ho – who, as an executive of the club, was not eligible to win access to the ticket allocation it was overseeing – said the membership appreciated the initiative, given the demand. “This ticket in theory could be harder to get than a Leafs playoff game,” he said.
“These were people who otherwise wouldn’t be able to afford a ticket,” he added, noting that the next least expensive category for the Toronto game is currently priced at $1,300. “This has actually been good, because we’ve got a little over 1,000 or so people that otherwise may not have been able to go.”