There's no hiding the ugly face of World Cup 2026

Ghana wants fans of its national squad, the Black Stars, to promise they’ll return home, keeping the country in Donald Trump’s good graces.

And a vast number of Canadians want nothing at all to do with their southern neighbours — not their travel hot spots, not their bourbon and wine, and certainly not their World Cup matches, even if they will feature the best soccer players on the planet.

Welcome to the ugly face of the beautiful game’s marquee event — World Cup 2026 — set to open in Canada, Mexico and the United States on June 11.

It’s a far cry from what the co-hosts, under the banner of United 2026 and the slogan of “Unity. Certainty. Opportunity,” promised when their bid was picked by FIFA, soccer’s governing body, in 2018.

The anticipated kumbaya ambience has turned into something of a dark cloud.

“I think it’s going to be a fairly sad World Cup,” said Ronan Evain, the French head of Football Supporters Europe.

When the tournament was awarded to North America, the president of U.S. Soccer predicted it would demonstrate that “we are all truly united through sport.”

Now, the U.S. is in a trade war with Canada and Mexico, and seeking an end to its shooting war with Iran, while fans from six competing nations — Haiti, Iran, Ivory Coast, Ghana, Democratic Republic of Congo and Senegal — are subject to U.S. visa bans and travel restrictions of varying severity.

“If you look at the last two World Cups (in Russia and Qatar) … your ticket was your visa,” said Jules Boykoff, a professor of politics and government at Oregon’s Pacific University. “That’s definitely not what’s happening here.”

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio warned late last year that, although extra officials had been deployed to fast-track demands for World Cup visitors, “it doesn’t guarantee admission to the U.S.”

That message is now sinking in.

There are reports from around the world of fans’ visa applications being rejected. Officials, too, with a handful from the Senegalese Football Federation, reportedly barred entry to the U.S.

The impact is being felt.

In a report this month, the American Hotel and Lodging Association said that while five million game tickets had been sold, bookings have fallen far short of expectations.

“Even with global anticipation building, the path to the U.S. for many World Cup travellers feels increasingly less like a red-carpet welcome,” the industry group said, citing visa barriers and geopolitical concerns as significant factors.

Hotel associations in Toronto and Vancouver have noted similar trends. Some have blamed the tournament’s sky-high ticket prices for discouraging people from travelling far from home to see matches.

The cost of a World Cup seat has sparked an official complaint from Football Supporters Europe, with allegations that FIFA has used deceptive advertising and sales tactics, and complaints that the price for the cheapest ticket to attend the World Cup final match is seven times higher than it was in Qatar in 2022.

“My personal belief is that those prices are an insult to the game,” said Evain, the group’s executive director. “This is a working-class game. Yes, VIPs want to come and want to have a good experience. That’s fine, as long as there are tickets for everyone.”

That sentiment is even stronger in Ghana, where the government is funding tickets and travel for hundreds of citizens, most of whom would never have the means to pay for such an experience, said Muftawu Nabila Abdulai, an Accra-based journalist with Joy Sports.

“How does that ordinary Ghanaian afford a flight ticket, afford a match ticket, afford accommodation, afford international transport to be able to watch the national team inside the stadium at the World Cup? It’s impossible.”

Even Trump, who slapped a billion-dollar entry fee on his Board of Peace earlier this year, balked when told that tickets to attend the U.S. men’s team’s June 12 opening match against Paraguay were going for $1,000.

“I wouldn’t pay it either, to be honest with you,” he told the New York Post.

Like in most everything these days, Trump’s spectre looms large over the tournament.

The American war with Iran, currently in a fragile standoff as the two sides seek a peace deal, has resulted in the Iranian side issuing a series of demands, including that players, staff and officials — even those who have served with the country’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps — receive travel visas.

The group is listed as a terrorist entity in the U.S. as well as in Canada, where the president of Iran’s football federation, Mehdi Taj, was issued a temporary resident visa but denied entry upon arrival.

Ghana’s pride at seeing its national team make it to soccer’s largest stage is tinged with concern about the blowback from the Trump administration if those citizens who are granted visas to follow the team to Toronto, Boston and Philadelphia overstay their welcome.

After seeking Trump’s favour by agreeing last fall to accept West African migrants deported from the U.S., John Dramani Mahama, Ghana’s president, has warned there is a risk that the country could be hit with a broader U.S. travel ban if citizens breach U.S. immigration laws.

Reports of many American visa applications being denied are tempering that risk. Two weeks ago, Abdulai learned that a group of about 30 people from Ghana had their requests for travel documents rejected, with many given no specific reason for the decision.

“When I was speaking to one of the guys, he was actually telling me that he couldn’t believe that he had been denied a visa. He had been to Germany to support the national team; he’d been to Qatar to support the national team. He was in South Africa to support the national team, but guess what? He was denied the visa.”

Three Lions Pride, a British LGBTQ+ fan group, said that despite initial optimism about a North American World Cup after “successive tournaments in repressive states for the LGBTQ+ community,” it had taken the decision to stay away from the U.S.

“The rhetoric and dangerous rollback of human rights in the U.S. has caused considerable concern to fans,” the group said in a statement, citing the risks of violence and discrimination as well as ”anti-trans legislation around bathrooms.”

Ticket prices, travel restrictions, toxic culture wars and tariff anger. Or another T-word: Trump.

“When you add all of this up … it doesn’t leave a lot of people that are ready to travel,” Evain said.

Major sports federations, such as the International Olympic Committee or FIFA, are often granted broad powers for the duration of the tournaments to ensure things run smoothly. Sometimes, those powers supersede even local laws.

This time, the ingratiation appears to have been reversed.

FIFA President Gianni Infantino has opened a temporary office in New York’s Trump Tower and awarded Trump a peace prize, loading him up with enough praise to make even the most devoted White House spokesperson blush.

“Infantino himself takes this sort of sycophancy to a new level, and he has for a long time,” said Boykoff, noting that the global soccer boss had played in the Kremlin with Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2018 and lived in Qatar ahead of the 2022 tournament.

“With Trump, it’s even more extreme. He spends more time in the White House than most international leaders.”

Those who are making the World Cup pilgrimage can expect to see Trump using the global sporting event to his benefit, or to deflect criticism and negative attention, said Boykoff.

“What’s he trying to deflect attention from? The Epstein files, his incredibly low popularity ratings. You can go right down the list,” he said.

It’s a tactic known as sportswashing and, throughout history, it’s been used to promote dictatorships, distract from abuses and launder the reputations of strongmen and scoundrels.

“It has enormous repercussions,” Boykoff said. “If he starts to feel the shine of the World Cup, it’s scary to think what he might do.”