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how to buy world cup 2026 tickets

No sporting event has ever had to allocate this many seats across this many jurisdictions. The 2026 World Cup runs 104 matches across sixteen host cities in the United States, Canada and Mexico, and the ticketing operation behind it has been engineered less like a box office and more like an airline revenue system. That shift explains almost everything supporters find confusing about the process: why identical seats show different prices on different days, why a successful ballot entry is not the same as a ticket, and why the resale market has become the single most expensive way to attend.

  • Pre-sale draws for holders of the tournament's official payment-partner cards, decided by random allocation rather than application time.
  • General random-selection draws open to any registered supporter with a verified FIFA ID.
  • Team-specific allocations released after the group draw, when supporters know which cities their side will actually play in.
  • Last-minute releases of held-back inventory — hospitality returns, broadcaster allocations, accessibility pairs — which appear without announcement in the final weeks.

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