Calls Mount for FIFA World Cup Boycott Amid US Rights Abuses

By Camila Escalante  –  Jan 29, 2026

At least 15 nations scheduled to participate in the World Cup face U.S. travel bans and visa restrictions, as ICE abductions, disappearances and killings continue.

International calls to boycott the US-hosted FIFA World Cup 2026 are increasing in response to widespread U.S. human rights violations domestically and Washington’s atrocities and malign activities abroad.

Former FIFA President Sepp Blatter has become the latest prominent voice to echo calls for football fans to boycott World Cup matches in the United States as the world witnesses public executions-gone-viral in Minneapolis and mass-scale repression and raids by masked agents on U.S. workplaces and homes. Blatter’s remarks follow the likes of UK MPs, a leading German soccer official, and sports columnists.

The U.S. invasion and terror attack in Venezuela and the abduction of President Maduro and Cilia Flores in early January triggered a new wave of concern over Washington’s accelerated plans to launch military attacks against Cuba, Nicaragua, Colombia, Mexico, Iran, Greenland and Canada. In Caracas, there’s even talk in support of an outright boycott of U.S. products.

Eleven of the 16 cities selected by the Federation to host the matches are in the United States (Atlanta, Boston, Dallas, Houston, Kansas City, Los Angeles, Miami, New Jersey, Philadelphia, San Francisco and Seattle), in a tournament that is being promoted as jointly hosted with Canada and Mexico. The U.S. will host 78 matches, while Canada and Mexico each prepare to host just 13 matches, beginning June 11.

Sport Scholars for Justice in Palestine will be hosting a town hall to hear from movement organizations and activists regarding the boycott, alongside Scottish Sport for Palestine, NOlympics LA, No Team Israel at the Davis Cup, Irish Sport for Palestine, and Black Alliance for Peace.

The North-South Project for People(s)-Centered Human Rights published a video urging organizations and people of conscience to demand that FIFA move the matches out of the United States. The North-South Project, part of The Black Alliance for Peace (BAP), has also circulated a petition calling on both FIFA and the IOC to ban the United States and Israel from hosting or participating in international sporting events.

“Allowing the U.S. to host the World Cup or any other international games would be an affront to the victims of U.S. lawlessness and its support for an ongoing genocide against the Palestinian people,” according to Ajamu Baraka, director of the BAP’s North-South Project.

Baraka continues, “The U.S. is an unsafe and illegitimate host. FIFA’s own statutes commit it to respecting internationally recognized human rights, yet allowing the U.S. to host. At the same time, it enables genocide, military aggression, racialized repression, and the mass criminalization of migrants, normalizing and legitimizing these crimes. In doing so, FIFA becomes complicit.”

U.S. non-profit CodePink is also demanding that FIFA move the games, citing the U.S. bombings of Nigeria and Venezuela.

Football journalist Nima Tavallaey Roodsari was among the early voices to argue that U.S. travel bans imposed during Trump’s first term—disproportionately targeting citizens of Muslim-majority and African countries—should automatically disqualify the U.S. from hosting. He’s joined by a growing number of sports journalists, sports content creators and podcasters sounding the alarm over travel to the U.S.

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Various forms of visa processing have been frozen for at least 15 of the World Cup qualified nations—nearly a third of participating teams. Citizens of Iran are subject to a blanket suspension of visas, with no guarantees for travel to the U.S. for Iranian players, coaches and staff, let alone fans. Haiti, whose national team qualified for the World Cup from Concacaf, is also among the 12 countries whose citizens face a full U.S. travel ban.

FIFA, under the leadership of President Gianni Infantino, invented a FIFA Peace Prize for the purpose of bestowing the award to Donald Trump, as U.S. massacres and extrajudicial killings in the Caribbean and Pacific hit the three month mark. The award drew criticism of sports broadcasters and pundits.

Infantino made multiple visits to the White House in 2025 to meet with Trump, beginning with Trump’s welcoming of Infantino to his Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida as part of a series of pre-inaugural events. The Trump-Infantino relationship spans years, with the U.S. president inviting the FIFA president to give an opening speech at a Trump-hosted dinner at the World Economic Forum in Davos in 2020.

 

Israeli firm International Security & Defense Systems (ISDS) has provided services to at least four World Cups; Mexico (1986), Italy (1990), South Africa (2010) and Russia (2018). NoOlympics LA explains How The Olympics and World Cup Help Fuel Israeli War Crimes in Palestine with event security schemes run by former Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) soldiers and Mossad agents.

While the U.S. utilizes Mossad and IOF for domestic event security, the Department of Homeland Security has confirmed its overseas deployment of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) during the 2026 Winter Olympic Games in Italy.

European objection to the U.S. hosted tournament is becoming louder each day. In The Netherlands, a petition to boycott, launched by Dutch broadcaster Teun van de Keuken, has amassed 156,000 signatures. The petition calls on the Dutch government to not allow the Dutch national football team to participate in the World Cup in the United States: “We do not want our footballers to implicitly support President Donald Trump’s violent terror policy against innocent migrants..”

Calls to boycott the 2026 FIFA World Cup have also come from tournament co-host, Mexico, where protests against U.S. meddling are being organized. Organizations and activists are urging a boycott of U.S. chains that finance wars. An op-ed in one of Mexico’s leading newspapers calls FIFA, “a cubil of millionaire thieves”, which ought to be outright banned as a sports authority.

Global backlash over ticket prices forced FIFA to created a limited “Supporter Entry Tier” price category in December. Even still, this year’s World Cup will be the most expensive, and least accessible to football fans, in history.

Protests are expected in the 11 U.S. host cities.

 

 

 

(Kawsachun News)