‘Cancel your tickets’: Calls grow to boycott US-hosted FIFA World Cup over Trump admin
With the 2026 FIFA World Cup set to be hosted in the United States this summer, calls have grown for a global boycott and ticket cancellations in protest of the Trump administration and its increasingly aggressive deployment of federal immigration agents.
“I had to cancel my World Cup plans,” wrote Ramy Abdu, a Palestinian academic and assistant professor of law and finance, in a social media post on X Friday. “Visiting the United States simply isn’t safe.”
A total of 11 U.S. cities will host the 2026 FIFA World Cup and are expected to pay millions of dollars to fund the events, creating an estimated budget shortfall for host cities of around $250 million in what critics have called “the worst deal in FIFA World Cup history.” Nevertheless, Trump has celebrated the tournament coming to the United States, after aggressively lobbying for years to secure the hosting rights.
However, in the wake of the killing of 37-year-old Renee Good – the Minnesota woman who was fatally shot by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent on Wednesday – and Trump’s subsequent deployment of over 100 more agents to the state, critics have increased calls for sports fans worldwide to boycott the 2026 FIFA World Cup.
“Would you have gone to watch the Olympics in Nazi Germany in 1936?” asked Pekka Kallioniemi, a Finnish social media analyst with a focus on propaganda and disinformation, in a social media post on X Friday. “If the answer is no, it’s time to cancel your US World Cup tickets.”
Another X user, “Princess Kim K,” a pro-Democratic Party political commentator with more than 73,000 followers, declared the United States to be “unsafe,” and urged people worldwide to not only cancel their tickets to the FIFA World Cup, but for the 2028 Summer Olympics – slated to be hosted in Los Angeles, California – to be held in another country.
“People need to cancel their World Cup and the Olympics need to be moved,” they wrote in a social media post on X. “The U.S. is unsafe!”