FIFA said Wednesday that ticket prices for the 2026 World Cup will start at $60 for the cheapest group-stage seats and range to $6,730 for the most expensive tickets to the final – but all of that is subject to change once sales begin in October.
A FIFA official, speaking to reporters on a Zoom call Tuesday, confirmed that organizers will use “variable pricing,” also known as dynamic pricing, for World Cup tickets.
This means that prices may – and probably will – change before and after the Dec. 5 World Cup draw, when group-stage matchups, dates and locations will be set.
“We will adapt prices as per the demand we see, as per the remaining inventory,” the FIFA official said.
An initial ticket phase, featuring a lottery, will open Sept. 10. Fans will apply for the chance to purchase tickets (using a Visa card); and if randomly selected, they’ll get the opportunity to buy up to 40 — up to four per match, for up to 10 matches — in a specific time slot in October.
A similar second phase, which will not include the Visa card requirement, will run from late October through early December. There will then be another lottery phase, followed by a first-come-first-served phase, after the World Cup draw.
FIFA officials said they had not yet determined all of the initial prices. They will divide tickets into four categories — with Category 1 being the most expensive and Category 4 the least expensive — but when asked about the prices for Category 1, 2 and 3 tickets to group-stage matches, one official said that those numbers weren’t set.
He also would not say how many of the $60 tickets will be available, nor what percentage of a given stadium will be considered “Category 4” seats, though he did say that percentage will “not be insignificant.”
In general, the lower bowl of stadiums will be Category 1; the second deck will be Category 2; and the upper deck will be Category 3 and 4. In most of the sales phases, fans will purchase tickets in these categories without knowing what section or row they’ll be assigned; they will not be able to choose specific seats.
The initial $6,730 maximum price for the final is not a hospitality ticket — those are already on sale, and range from $3,500 to $73,200 per person across the tournament.
The regular-ticket maximum is more than four times the price of Category 1 tickets to the 2022 World Cup final in Qatar, which cost $1,605. (Category 2 was $1,002, and Category 3 was $604.)
The FIFA official said Tuesday that organizers had “committed to the $60” as a starting point, but that “we will apply variable pricing from Day 1 of the process.” That means prices could rise or fall during the presale phase, which will run through Oct. 21. (Sept. 19 is the deadline to apply.)
Although dynamic pricing is typically associated with price increases, the opposite happened ahead of the 2025 Club World Cup. Months after FIFA overestimated demand with its initial prices, the cost of tickets plummeted as FIFA scrambled to fill otherwise-empty seats.
The expectation, though, is that demand for the 2026 World Cup, which will feature 104 matches in 16 cities across the U.S., Canada and Mexico, will be much higher, and prices could rise.
“We do not intend at all to change prices every five minutes,” the official clarified, but he acknowledged that part of the process would involve automation.
To justify the “variable pricing” approach, he and another World Cup official said that it would allow FIFA to maximize revenues and attendance. Soccer’s global governing body, which runs the World Cup, expects to make over $3 billion from hospitality and ticket sales. It also expects to smash the previous World Cup attendance record, which is still held by the 1994 edition, a 24-team tournament in the U.S.
The FIFA official also cited local customs. “What FIFA is doing is adapting to the domestic market,” he said. “And it’s a reality in the U.S. and Canada that events are being priced as per the demand that is coming in for that event.”
(Photo by Fabrice Coffrini/AFP/Getty Images)
FIFA to have its own resale hub
FIFA will also adapt its resale strategy to North America. When ticket sales begin, it will launch its own resale platform. In the past, it has capped prices on these secondary sales, to prevent fans and scalpers from reselling for profit. But in 2026, for ticket buyers in the U.S. and Canada, there will be no cap, according to World Cup chief operating officer Heimo Schrigi.
The reason, Schrigi explained, is that if there were a cap, “people would go to other resale platforms, and would try to find other ways of reselling the ticket, which obviously is something we don’t want. We want to keep a safe and secure and regulated environment for fans to be able to resell their tickets.”
The exception is for Mexico, where resale laws are stricter. After extensive discussions with the Mexican government, FIFA agreed to create a separate, dedicated resale platform for Mexicans fans, who will only be allowed to post their tickets for resale at face value. It will function more like a ticket exchange than a resale market.
When asked what fees or cut of resales FIFA would take on its official platform, a spokesman said that would be finalized at a later date.
FIFA officials said that around 1 million tickets would likely be available in the first Visa presale phase — out of roughly 6 million in total for the tournament.
One official mentioned that 8.5 million people had officially “registered their interest” in tickets since FIFA began asking fans to do so.
The World Cup is slated to begin June 11 in Mexico City and conclude with the final July 19 at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J.
The case for and against dynamic pricing
For event organizers like FIFA, dynamic pricing comes with dual benefits.
It allows them to raise prices if and when they sense they can make more money on tickets.
It also allows them to set high initial prices, knowing they can eventually lower those prices if sales are slow. (This is precisely what happened with the Club World Cup.)
The argument against dynamic pricing, of course, is that a lower fixed price would allow fans with less money to experience the World Cup.
The argument for dynamic pricing, essentially, is that a lower fixed price also incentivizes scalping. The scalpers then resell for profits, and the outcome for most consumers is the same — prices on the secondary market end up just as high as, if not higher than, the dynamic prices FIFA could charge. The only difference is that the money ends up in the hands of the scalpers — some of them Average Joes, some of them slimy profiteers — rather than FIFA.
Some would argue that’s a good thing. FIFA would argue that the money should go into its coffers and then out into the world to fund football development.
And because FIFA controls the World Cup, FIFA’s argument wins.
(Top photo: Gary A. Vasquez-Imagn Images)