FIFA says the World Cup unites the world. Yet the 2026 tournament reveals a different reality: access to the world’s biggest sporting event depends on nationality, passports, visas, and political power. Rather than transcending global inequalities, the World Cup reflects them.
FIFA’s official mission for the 2026 World Cup is:
To touch, unite and inspire the world through its competitions and events
After the opening weeks of the tournament, the idea that sport can be separated from politics seems increasingly naive. The reality is different. Powerful figures off the pitch influence who gets to step onto it.
Even before the World Cup started, the tournament faced criticism over skyrocketing ticket prices, FIFA’s president Gianni Infantino’s close ties to Trump, and particularly its hosting in the United States.
These issues of inequality and unequal access extend far beyond the tournament itself. The World Cup will end in August, but the power imbalances it exposes will remain.
Rather than asking whether the World Cup can unite the world, perhaps we should use the spotlight to ask what it reveals about the unequal world it claims to represent.
Who Gets to Play, and Who’s Left on the Bench?
Two recent cases illustrate how global power, politics, and football are deeply intertwined.
Honored as one of Africa’s best referees, Somali Omar Artan, was in June denied entry to the United States despite holding a valid travel visa. He was stopped upon arrival at Miami International Airport. The Trump administration claimed the reason to be “association with suspected members of terror organizations,” but has not elaborated further on the claim.
Somalia is currently one of the countries on Trump’s travel ban list, and Donald Trump has previously expressed:
“Somalia, it’s a beautiful place. It’s got no government, it’s got no military, it’s got no anything. It’s got one thing that’s really strong – crime. It’s got a lot of crime. They have no police. All they do is run around shooting each other. It’s filthy, dirty, disgusting, dirty. It’s a horrible place.”
The Somali referee is not alone. The Iranian national team is also facing restrictions as an equally qualified team, experiencing unequal rights of access to the games. The current war between the U.S and Iran is leaving marks on the World Cup. Firstly, several members of the team were not granted visas, with Iran’s embassy in Turkey accusing the U.S. of “politically biased interference in sport”.
Furthermore, the team’s training base was moved from Tucson, Arizona, to Mexico shortly before the games. Usually, teams use the days before matches to train and prepare at the location of the event. For Iran, this was already limited to 24-hour access windows, meaning traveling across the U.S. border within a day of matches, leaving them with significantly less preparation time than their competing teams. This window was, however, expanded to two days after their first two matches.
A Celebration for the Rich
The Somali referee and Iranian team demonstrate how nationality can become a barrier to participation. Yet exclusion is not limited to immigration policies. For many fans, the barrier is economic. As ticket prices and travel costs continue to rise, attending the World Cup becomes increasingly reserved for those who can afford it.
FIFA still insists that the World Cup is a global celebration ‘for everyone’, while the 2026 tournament is on track to become one of the most expensive in history, with match tickets costing as much as $5,000 and front-row seats reportedly selling for $32,970, alongside steep costs for parking, transport to stadiums, and accommodation.
This reflects a broader reality of participation: it is not only shaped by passports, but also by purchasing power. As this World Cup becomes the most expensive in history, it also reflects a wider moment in which wealth gaps are growing and political influence is increasingly concentrated. Just in the U.S., the wealth inequality hit its widest gap in three decades in 2025. In that sense, the World Cup begins to mirror not just global sport, but global inequality itself, and how power comes with money.
The World Cup Reflects Reality
The media has criticised FIFA, Infantino, and the United States for discriminatory practices. Yet, the tournament is already breaking viewership records.
The cases of the Somali referee and the Iranian team are not merely football stories. They can be seen as reflections of a global reality, where we watch, while others’ access is shaped by borders, visas, and political power. Currently, attention is on the U.S. when discussing strict immigration laws, especially after Trump’s 2025 second travel ban, and ongoing ICE raids in 2026. But for many, these systems of exclusion are not exceptional; they are an everyday reality.
The question of borders extends beyond the sports field. Every year, international students are admitted to prestigious universities based on academic ability, only to face visa barriers, delays, or rejection before they can begin their studies. Qualification alone is not enough. Just as the Somali referee Omar Artan was qualified to officiate and Iran qualified to compete, opportunity is often shaped not only by talent, but also by nationality and passport privilege.
The same pattern can be seen more broadly. Across the world, borders are becoming increasingly central to political debate. In Europe, parties advocating stricter immigration policies continue to gain support, alongside rising nationalism and conservatism. The EU’s Pact on Migration and Asylum, which becomes applicable in 2026, reflects this shift. In this context, mobility is increasingly shaped by political decisions that determine who can enter borders – and who cannot.
Economically, the same pattern appears. The World Cup is marketed as a global celebration, yet attending it increasingly depends on financial capacity. Rising wealth inequality, housing costs, and uneven economic opportunity mean access to global spaces is no longer only a question of rights or nationality, but also of cost.
Individual Players vs World Powers
This is why the World Cup matters beyond sport, it asks a simple question: who gets to participate?
The tournament does not create these inequalities. It exposes them. Under the disguise of sport and global unity, it reveals a world shaped by uneven access, political division, and concentrated power. Despite its ambitions to unite the world, it exposes the forces and barriers in the current world that complicate the goal.
The World Cup will end in a few weeks. The stadiums will empty, the winners will be celebrated, and the headlines will move on. But the questions it has exposed should remain in the world’s spotlight: who gets to cross borders, who gets access to education, work, and opportunity, and who is left outside.
The World Cup’s greatest lesson may not be about football at all. It i about the rules that determine who gets to participate long after the final whistle.
