Fifa has canceled World Cup tickets issued to about 60 fans who mistakenly received them for free due to a website error, and soccer’s governing body is now requiring full payment for those tickets. The tickets were “allocated at no charge [0 USD] due to a prior payment issue during the checkout process,” Fifa said in a statement on Thursday.
“Fifa regrets the error and any inconvenience caused,” the statement added. “The tickets requested by these fans remain reserved, and the affected fans have been invited to complete payment of the correct amount.”
The incident is the latest glitch in a World Cup ticketing program that has often been controversial. The attorneys general of New York and New Jersey are currently investigating the program for possible violations of consumer protection laws. The mispriced tickets were sold through the official World Cup site on May 21, according to an email from Fifa to buyers. That date came more than three months after Fifa President Gianni Infantino declared that all 104 World Cup games had sold out.
Despite the sellout claim, tickets are still being sold by Fifa for games at the World Cup, which opens next Thursday in Mexico City. It remains unclear whether seats for games with lower demand will drop in price under Fifa’s surge pricing model, which has faced criticism from fans. Fifa is also operating its own resale platform, taking a 15% commission from both buyers and sellers to eliminate ticket dealers. However, third-party sales platforms like Seat Geek were offering widespread availability for many games on Friday.
Tickets for the 2026 World Cup are significantly more expensive than any previous edition. Fifa has justified the high prices as a means to earn billions of dollars that will be distributed to member federations for global game development. Fifa has taken control of pricing and ticket sales as part of bringing World Cup operations in-house, a departure from the previous model of working with host nations’ local organizing committees. When the soccer federations of the United States, Canada, and Mexico won hosting rights in 2018, they promised to sell hundreds of thousands of tickets at $21 each for group-stage games.
