The 2026 World Cup will attract millions of foreign fans. Will the U.S. grant them visas?

The 6 million fans will come from Asia and Latin America, from Africa and Europe, from all across the globe. The 2026 men’s World Cup, co-hosted by the U.S., Canada and Mexico, will “welcome” them; it will be “the greatest spectacle of celebration and inclusivity,” FIFA president Gianni Infantino has said, and “the biggest, best and most inclusive FIFA World Cup ever.”

With 17 months until kickoff, however, it is dogged by festering concerns that some of those millions won’t be allowed to enter the United States — because they won’t be able to get U.S. visas.

Fans, World Cup organizers, politicians and other stakeholders are worried that stringent immigration laws and “unacceptably high” visa wait times will hinder certain segments of supporters, and cloud FIFA’s promise of an “inclusive,” welcoming event.

Many of those supporters from non-European countries will need to interview for a visa; but, per January 2025 estimates, the wait for interviews at U.S. embassies or consulates in Colombia, or Nigeria, or India would stretch beyond 300 days.

The Department of State, which manages visa processing, has pledged to lower those wait times. Barring a late policy change, though, it will not treat soccer fans preferentially. Whereas previous World Cup hosts, such as Russia and Qatar, designed processes to fast-track ticket-holders into their countries, the U.S. government has no such plans.

And so, the concerns — which also pertain to the 2025 Club World Cup and 2028 Olympics — linger. Some government officials argue they’re overblown, because millions of fans will qualify for waivers or already have U.S. visas. But still, experts say, concern could crescendo under incoming President Donald Trump, who has repeatedly vowed to crack down on immigration and “seal up those borders.” Even if Trump seizes upon the World Cup as an instrument of soft power, and grants FIFA favorable treatment, fast-tracking fans to U.S. shores likely won’t be a top priority.

“There’s just not a good way, and a limited amount of time, to differentiate between the millions of people who are applying for a visa to come into the United States — for business reasons, for visiting family, or for the purposes of staying long term — and people who are just coming for the [World Cup],” Travis Murphy, a former State Department officer and now the CEO of Jetr Global, a sports immigration consultancy, told Yahoo Sports. “I have to assume that wait times will go up, that immigration restrictions will be tightened. And as such, the fans — that could continue to be an issue.”

The U.S. visa process

Underpinning the issue, which will disproportionately affect fans from Latin America and Africa, is a visa process that’s complicated and time-consuming.

The U.S. welcomes tens of millions of visitors annually; but it doesn’t just welcome anyone. U.S. law requires most foreigners to “establish” that they have “no intention of abandoning” their native country; that they’re “visiting the United States temporarily,” rather than intending to immigrate.

So, to secure a “B” visitor visa, they must first fill out the DS-160, an online form that “takes approximately 90 minutes” to complete, per the State Department. They must submit documentation and personal details; education and work histories; their U.S. itinerary, if they have one; their history of international travel, and more. They must do it all in English, then pay a $185 application fee and schedule an in-person appointment at a U.S. embassy or consulate. There, they must submit fingerprints and convince an interviewing officer that they won’t use this “nonimmigrant visa” to stay in the U.S. permanently.

“The basis of what we’re doing,” says Julie Stufft, the State Department’s deputy assistant secretary for visa services, is “accepting people for their willingness to go back to their home country when they’re done with their trip.”

From October 2022 to September 2023 (FY2023), the State Department accepted 5.9 million applicants for “B” visitor visas; it denied 1.8 million. Separately, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) can reject a would-be visitor. Those with a criminal history, without proof of previous travel, without stable income, or without strong ties to home are more likely to be denied by either DHS or State.

All of those criteria lead experts to believe that a minority of fans who plan travel to the 2026 World Cup could be refused entry to the U.S., which will host 78 of the 104 matches. “If they don’t have any sort of [travel history], and they’re seeking for this to be their first international trip, it’s going to be very difficult to obtain a visa,” Murphy says.

And for some, it could be difficult to even land an interview.

U.S. visa wait times

None of the above will apply to the citizens of 43 countries — most of Europe, Australia and New Zealand, Japan and South Korea, Israel, Qatar and a few more — who qualify for the Visa Waiver Program. The vast majority of fans from those countries, which should comprise roughly half the 2026 World Cup field, will be allowed to travel with an electronic authorization, and won’t need to navigate the intensive visa application process.

Others, meanwhile, should be able to score an interview. Wait times aren’t universally long. In Argentina, Brazil, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, they’re less than 50 days.

In Colombia, though, the wait is 700 days. In Turkey, it’s 560. In Ecuador, Morocco, Côte d’Ivoire, Honduras, Costa Rica, Mexico and elsewhere, it’s more than 200. In Iran, Venezuela and a few other potential World Cup nations, there is no operating U.S. embassy, and visa applicants must go through a consulate or embassy abroad.

The wait times, which are among the highest in the world, could foil or deter thousands of fans who’d otherwise plan a World Cup trip — either to attend matches, or to simply partake in the surrounding party.

In response to this concern, the State Department’s primary message to fans has been to “apply early.” Stufft, the visa services deputy, told Yahoo Sports in an October interview: “If you think you might be coming to the World Cup, either as a ticketed guest or somebody who wants to be adjacent to the activities, apply now.” FIFA has echoed and amplified that advice. “Fans can apply for visas at any time to start the process,” a spokesman told Yahoo Sports in an emailed statement, “and they do not need to wait for a ticket.”

To many, though, the advice is unsatisfactory. No nations have qualified yet; no tickets are available. Relatively few fans will pay $185 for the chance to get a visa, and for the chance to get a (potentially very expensive) ticket to a World Cup match between unknown teams.

The vast majority who need to apply, therefore, will probably do so between the fall of 2025 — when most teams will qualify, and when tickets will go on sale — and the spring of 2026.

The U.S. government’s task will be to meet that surging demand.

Why the U.S. won’t give the World Cup special treatment

The creation of a special, World Cup-specific visa circulated as an idea within FIFA and the U.S. government, multiple people familiar with the discussions told Yahoo Sports. Organizers of the Los Angeles Olympics have pushed for something similar in 2028, à la Paris 2024.

Such a system, though, would likely apply only to “accredited individuals” — athletes, coaches, staff, administrators; and perhaps media, commercial partners, volunteers and stadium workers.

Opening it to fans — or waiving the visa requirement, as Russia did in 2018 with its “Fan ID” system — was always considered unlikely in the world’s wealthiest country, where, unlike in Russia or Qatar, there is suspicion that foreigners would use the World Cup as a false pretense to immigrate. (Of the 9.8 million people from non-North American, non-Visa Waiver Program countries who entered the U.S. as visitors and were expected to depart in FY2023, a suspected 298,560 — around 3% — overstayed their “B” visas and remained in the country, per DHS data.)

And what about allowing fans to skip the monthslong lines for visa interviews, which could leave them waiting until after the World Cup is over?

That, as one person close to the issue said, wouldn’t be fair to the “people that miss weddings, that miss funerals, that miss important opportunities professionally, that don’t get to school on time and therefore lose out on scholarships,” all while waiting on visas. “There’s no shortage of people with urgent need to travel to the United States for a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that aren’t being allowed to go to the front of the line.”

Plus, one government official reasoned to Yahoo Sports, it would rankle Disney and hundreds of other companies or events that also attract tourists but don’t get preferential treatment.

“There’s a general mentality within the State Department,” Murphy says, “that all applicants are treated equal.”

And so, “Our goal,” Stufft said, “is to use our existing process … to make sure that anybody who wants to visit the U.S. gets a visa interview that matches their own travel plans.”

Besides, the creation of a special visa would probably require new legislation. A bill would have to trudge through the labyrinth of Congress, at a time when the legislative priority is to tighten border security, not loosen it. Even if one were conceived, introduced, passed and signed into law, “for the World Cup, I think that’s too late,” Tiffany Derentz, a former State Department official and current senior counsel at immigration law firm BAL, told Yahoo Sports. Implementation might require technology. “Anything involving technology, and changes to an existing system,” Derentz explained, “are just a lot harder than it might seem to implement, and take time. Because it has to hit on a number of different systems, and across a number of different agencies.”

So, in talks with DHS and the State Department, FIFA has focused on operating within current boundaries. Soccer’s global governing body, in addition to sorting through visa processes for World Cup participants, has urged the State Department to address the wait times for fans, multiple people involved in the discussions told Yahoo Sports. The hope is that State will hustle resources and personnel to countries who’ll qualify for the World Cup. It is already “sending temporary additional staff to Colombia and extending operating hours,” a State Department spokesman told Yahoo Sports. “Tourists and business travelers should see appointment availability increase and wait times fall in the coming months.”

Trump’s impact

The wait times largely stem from the COVID-19 pandemic, “which made it so difficult for our embassies and consulates around the world to issue visas,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said. Then, as tourism rebounded post-pandemic, the State Department struggled to keep pace with pent-up, unprecedented demand. It is now processing record numbers of applicants — 12.9 million nonimmigrants in 2023 — but knows it must do more.

“We’re doing everything we can to ramp up our capacity to make sure that everyone who’s coming to this country, for these [sporting] events as well as for so much else, get their visas in a timely way and smooth way,” Blinken said in October.

On Monday, though, a new administration will take charge, one that “was not particularly friendly to immigrants and foreign nationals previously,” Derentz says. “So there is a lot of concern there with how the incoming [Trump] administration will handle [World Cup] visitors while maintaining the appearance of keeping their immigration agenda — which is likely going to include travel bans, and create significant hurdles to obtain a visa.”

Trump, amid similar concerns in 2018, when the U.S., Canada and Mexico were bidding for this World Cup, signed a letter to Infantino that stated, in part: “I am confident … that all eligible athletes, officials and fans from all countries around the world would be able to enter the United States without discrimination.”

Also in his first term, though, Trump suspended some visa interview waivers, and amended a President Barack Obama executive order to remove a command that “80 percent of nonimmigrant visa applicants [should be] interviewed within 3 weeks of receipt of application.”

Similar moves eight years later could, experts say, further complicate World Cup travel. “There’s potential [to] start seeing wait times going back up instead of down,” Derentz says, and “slower processing overall, and greater scrutiny.”

Will players struggle to get visas?

There is significantly less concern that the stringent system will impact players or coaches, like it did athletes at the 2022 world track and field championships and various lesser-known teams over the years. “I don’t lose any sleep over that,” Stufft said. “We work with FIFA directly from my office on almost a daily basis. So, we will be sure to know who needs to be here for work. That part we’ll get right.”

“Our agreement with FIFA is that we have expeditious processing for anyone who is involved with the games themselves,” she added. But she couldn’t say who, exactly, would be considered “involved.” Players will, but how far will the “expeditious processing” extend? To journalists? To sponsor reps? To vendors?

Multiple people familiar with the planning said some of that is still undecided.

“There’s been a lot of conversation that accredited individuals and teams will be fine, they’ll be prioritized,” Murphy says. “But how that will actually work has not been outlined in any way, nor communicated to individual embassies.”

There are also gray areas between visa categories, and unanswered questions about how some of the 500,000-plus people that FIFA plans to credential will get clearance to come. Like fans, many will need to get it in early 2026. “And so,” Derentz says, “you have thousands and thousands and thousands of travelers all around the world trying to get through a process at the same time.”

Whether they’ll get through without hiccups remains to be seen. The 2026 World Cup will be the first mega sporting event that the U.S. has hosted since the 2002 Winter Olympics — before DHS was established, and security was strengthened, in response to the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

So there is no applicable precedent. At earlier planning stages, according to multiple people familiar with the process, many within the U.S. government didn’t grasp the scope and global significance of the World Cup; some held up smaller, less prestigious events, such as cricket’s T20 World Cup or other soccer tournaments, as evidence the U.S. was prepared for 2026.

Now, there is at least a better understanding of the magnitude. How that will translate to policy, or to visa decisions, is the big unknown.

FIFA, in its emailed statement, said that its 2026 World Cup subsidiary is “working with the State Department to ensure those individuals involved in staging the event have a streamlined visa process, which includes educating State Department officials on the roles that are necessary for a successful World Cup.”