FIFA Hikes World Cup Final Top Ticket Price to Nearly $11,000 Amid Glitch-Hit Sales Reopening

FIFA raised the top ticket price for the World Cup final to $10,990 during the glitch-hampered reopening of sales on Wednesday, after the 48-team field for this year's tournament was finalized. The top ticket price stood at $8,680 when FIFA first sold tickets after the tournament draw in December.

Category 2 tickets for the final have since risen by $1,805, with category 3 up by $1,600. Tickets were listed for 17 of the 72 group-stage matches as of Wednesday evening, with none of the knockout stage games on sale.

FIFA is using dynamic pricing for the tournament, meaning the price customers pay can change during the ticket sale process depending on demand and availability. Democratic members of the US Congress wrote in a March 10 letter to FIFA President Gianni Infantino that the use of dynamic ticket pricing will make the 2026 World Cup the most financially exclusionary and inaccessible to date.

Euroconsumers, a European consumer rights organization, and the Football Supporters Europe filed a formal complaint with the European Commission last month over the soaring costs for 2026 World Cup tickets.

Only $2,735 tickets, the highest-priced seats, were available by evening for the US opener against Paraguay. No tickets were listed for the Americans' June 19 game against Australia or their match against Turkey. Also by Wednesday evening, only $2,985 seats were available for the tournament opener between Mexico and Saudi Arabia on June 11, up $630 from sales in December. Only $2,240 tickets were available for Canada's first game on June 12 against Bosnia-Herzegovina, an increase of $70.

Fans shared their frustration with the ticket prices and purchasing process on Twitter. FIFA did not announce which games and price categories were available, leaving potential ticket buyers to search themselves on a FIFA ticketing site that often took hours to enter. Some people who clicked on what FIFA called its last-minute sales phase when sales opened at 11 am EDT were directed into a queue for a sales phase aimed at fans of the six nations that earned berths on Tuesday. FIFA did not have an explanation for why the link misdirection occurred but said around noon that the links were working properly.

FIFA also said that not all remaining tickets were being put on sale for the 104 games to be played and that additional tickets will be released on a rolling basis. This was the fifth phase of ticket sales. FIFA said this phase, which will remain open through the tournament, marked the first time a specific seat location could be purchased rather than a request for a ticket in a category.

Infantino claimed in January that the number of ticket requests FIFA had received was equivalent to the request for 1,000 years of World Cups at once. It was unclear whether many of those requests were for seats in the lowest-price categories.

Bosnia-Herzegovina, Congo, the Czech Republic, Iraq, Sweden, and Turkey completed the World Cup field. Fans of teams eliminated on Tuesday—including Italy, Poland, Denmark, Jamaica, and Bolivia—could attempt to resell tickets they had already purchased. FIFA has its own resale market, collecting 15 percent from both the buyer and the seller. Infantino defended FIFA's cut of resales, saying the governing body was engaged in a legal commercial activity under US law. Some European countries have laws that restrict resale by requiring tickets to be sold for face value or only by authorized partners of the event organizers.