Global football, written sharply
If you are trying to work out how to get to Gillette Stadium for the World Cup 2026 start with the fact the tournament’s branding would rather you didn’t dwell on: “Boston Stadium” is not in Boston. It sits in Foxborough, roughly 22 miles southwest of the city, ringed by Route 1 and very little … Read more
Teachers’ strikes and public tension cloud Mexico City’s World Cup opener preparations. What the Zócalo buzz masks about the mood on the ground.
There is a quiet scandal of arithmetic buried in the build-up to Canada’s first men’s World Cup, and it has nothing to do with what fans pay. It is about what the host cities themselves are doing as sellers. Toronto’s World Cup 2026 ticket resale programme, the city buying its own allocation of seats and … Read more
For a month we have written the same warning about how to get to Estadio Ciudad de México for the World Cup 2026 opener as we have for every other venue: in North America, the stadium is the easy part and the last mile is where the plan breaks. Mexico City breaks the pattern. When … Read more
The World Cup opens on Thursday, and if you want to get to MetLife Stadium for the World Cup 2026, the most important thing to understand is this: almost every way in now requires a match ticket and an advance purchase. In the final week before kickoff, New Jersey and FIFA have locked in an … Read more
Somali referee Omar Artan, Iranian fans and officials among those blocked from entering the US for World Cup 2026. Full analysis of the growing entry crisis.
Three days before a ball is kicked, one of the most aggressive enforcement build-outs around the tournament is not aimed at ticket touts or hooligans. It is aimed at money. The World Cup 2026 human trafficking crackdown now runs from a White House task force down through the Treasury Department’s financial-intelligence unit to the teller … Read more
From referee Omar Artan to Iranian officials, Trump-era border restrictions are disrupting World Cup 2026. We break down who’s affected and what it means.
The story so far. The 2026 World Cup draw on 5 December 2025 split 48 teams into twelve groups of four. The format is new and it changes everything: the top two from each group advance, plus the eight best third-placed sides, 32 teams into the knockouts. Finishing third is no longer fatal, which quietly … Read more
Four days before the United States opens its home World Cup, the US opener tickets for World Cup 2026 still have not sold out, and the way FIFA has priced this tournament means that is not an accident of weak interest so much as a confession written into the algorithm. As of June 8, FIFA’s … Read more
