Further World Cup tickets released but FIFA accused of deceiving fans with new category

Martin Macdonald

• 9 Apr 2026 13:30 CDT
• 3 min read

News

Several fans who purchased Category One tickets for World Cup matches have been left in disbelief at the location of their seats inside the stadium.

This comes after FIFA has released a batch of new tickets at a high price, which are apparently in the seats that those original Category One tickets were meant to occupy.

Effectively, FIFA has moved those original Category One tickets to other sections within stadiums in order to charge exorbitant prices for a new batch of elite-category tickets, further fuelling the narrative that they are putting money and revenue above all else at the 2026 World Cup.

Over the last few months, fans have been purchasing tickets across four categories, with Category One tickets costing hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars.

Those who purchased tickets waited in expectation to see where their ticket would be assigned and a lot have been left disappointed.

“A lot of people feel misled, or confused, or maybe just generally let down about the way seats were assigned,” Jordan Likover, an angered fan, told The Athletic.

“You can’t change the rules of the game after someone’s played,” he said. “Like, people paid expecting to be seated in one place. And then when they were assigned [seats], it’s changed.”

He purchased Category One tickets at a high price and his assigned seats for two matches at the AT&T Stadium are in a Category Two area.

After being quizzed on the subject by The Athletic via email, FIFA said “indicative category maps” were “to help fans understand where their seats could be located within a stadium. These maps were designed to provide guidance rather than the exact seat layout, and reflect the general extent of each ticket category within the stadium.”

A week after those initial tickets were assigned, FIFA released the new batch of tickets which were, in some cases, double the price of those original Category One tickets.

“This is just another example of how deceptive the original maps were,” another fan Ben Kurzman, wrote to the Athletic. “[FIFA] let people believe that by buying Category 1 seats, they might end up in a lower sideline section close to the field, when that was never going to happen.”

This new Category has seemingly come out of nowhere as has been called 'Front Category 1' by FIFA. This was not advertised previously.

The pricing of match tickets has cast a cloud over the 2026 World Cup as many fans feel taken advantage of. At the moment, group stage matches are still going for around $450 while there are some tickets for the World Cup Final being sold for nearly $11,000.

“FIFA doesn’t have any goodwill with fans,” said Andrew Swart, a New Yorker who purchased a Category One ticket — purchased for $862.50 - only to be placed in a Category Two area.

“Our default assumption is that they’re doing something to be either underhanded or maximise profit.”

FIFA President Gianni Infantino previously dodged the issue when asked about it, insisting fans must be happy with the ticket prices due to the amount of ticket requests football's governing body received.

"We have six to seven million tickets on sale and in 15 days we received 150 million ticket requests," the FIFA president said at the World Sports Summit in Dubai.

"So 10 million ticket requests every single day. It shows how powerful the World Cup is.

"In the almost 100 years of the World Cup, Fifa has sold 44 million tickets in total. So, in two weeks we could have filled 300 years of World Cups. Imagine that. This is absolutely crazy."

The FIFA president also insisted that the money earned from ticket sales will be reinvested in the infrastructure of the game all over the world.

"What's crucial is that the revenues that are generated from this are going back to the game all over the world," he explained.

"Without Fifa there would be no football in 150 countries in the world. There is football because, and thanks to, these revenues we generate with, and from, the World Cup which we reinvest all over the world."

The next edition of the World Cup will take place in the United States, Canada and Mexico and will feature 48 nations, an increase on 32 from the previous World Cup in Qatar in 2022.