Nearly 180,000 tickets are still available through World Cup resale portals: report | OneFootball

Soccer fans hoping to snag a World Cup 2026 ticket may be in luck; there's still approximately 180,000 tickets left in resale portals for the big tournament this summer.

According to a new analysis by the Financial Times, nearly 180,000 tickets for the World Cup — which kicks off this Thursday — are for sale on FIFA's official resale portals.

FIFA's ticket prices are so high for the tournament that in some cases scalpers have had to discount their holdings by approximately 20 percent just to move the paper, The Daily Beast reports.

Tickets for even low-profile games in the U.S. can run fans around $140 per ticket. The most expensive tickets for regular seats at the U.S. opener were priced at $2,735. That's more than the final cost for a seat at the 2022 World Cup final. The cheapest seats for the opener are around $1,000. The Athletic recently reported that the price for any game at any stage of the World Cup 2026 is higher than an equivalent ticket for any prior FIFA tournament.

The World Cup will be hosted by the U.S., Canada, and Mexico this year, but ticket sales have been the slowest for the U.S. games, according to the FT.

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There are still thousands of tickets available for World Cup matches on both FIFA’s official resale portal and on third-party ticket apps like Ticketmaster and SeatGeek (Getty Images)

There are still approximately 4,000 tickets on sale for the U.S. team's opening match against Paraguay at the SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, California, on June 13.

According to NPR, those interested in seeing that match don't even have to go to the resale portal, as there were still approximately 132 regular tickets available as of Monday.

Canada's opening match against Bosnia at BMO Field, Toronto, also on June 13, had 226 regular tickets left available as of Monday. Mexico's opener against South Africa, at the Mexico City Stadium on Thursday, is the only host country opening match to actually sell out.

Despite all the political turmoil surrounding President Donald Trump's immigration and visa policies, ticketing experts have largely agreed that the largest contributor to poor ticket sales is FIFA's pricing.

Even Trump himself said he wouldn't pay the prices FIFA was asking to watch a match.

"I would certainly like to be there, but I wouldn't pay it either, to be honest with you," Trump told The New York Post.

Swaths of empty seats at stadiums wouldn't look great for FIFA, which often claims that the World Cup is the "world's greatest sporting event." FIFA President Gianni Infantino boasted earlier this year that all 104 games were effectively "sold out," but that doesn't appear to have been true.

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FIFA President Gianni Infantino previously said that World Cup 2026 tickets were all but ‘sold out’ (AFP/Getty)

Ben Shields, a senior lecturer at the MIT Sloan School of Management, told NPR that the organization is likely hoping that the spectacle and excitement surrounding the tournament will help overshadow any perceived lack of interest caused by matches that don't sell out.

"The hope or bet — for FIFA is that once the matches start — and the greatest players in the world compete for the most prestigious prize of them all, the sport as business lens will fade into the background and the World Cup will be seen and experienced as the enduring global institution that it is," Shields said. "We shall see."

In the meantime, tickets are still available not only through FIFA's portals, but also on third-party event apps like Ticketmaster and SeatGeek.

As of Tuesday there were approximately 1,680 tickets available for Friday's U.S. opener, and 600 tickets on SeatGeek.