The world football association FIFA is “rewarding” the most loyal fans and offering another, comparatively cheaper ticket category for the 2026 World Cup. The new “base rank” is available at a fixed price of 60 US dollars (51 euros) per card and game for all 104 matches including the final, FIFA announced on Tuesday.
The new ticket category is intended exclusively for fans of qualified teams. The cards are distributed via the respective associations, in the case of the German national team via the German Football Association.
The DFB recently criticized the ticket prices. “The World Cup is far away from Germany and a visit involves a lot of effort and high travel costs anyway. That’s another reason why we would have liked cheaper tickets for our fans overall,” said managing director Andreas Rettig. There was also criticism from fan organizations.
50 percent of the respective ticket quota for the relevant association now goes to the cheapest categories “budget rank” (40 percent) and “basic rank” (10 percent). According to FIFA, the remaining half is divided into the “standard rank” and “first rank” categories.
The global demand for tickets for the XXL finals in the USA, Mexico and Canada is huge. During the random drawing sales period, which began on December 11, 20 million orders have already been received from 200 countries. Germany is directly behind the host nations in the ranking of countries with the greatest demand.
The DFB team was drawn into World Cup Group E on December 5th. She will face outsider Curacao at the start of the preliminary round on June 14th in Houston. Six days later, African champions Cote d’Ivoire (Ivory Coast) are the second opponents in Toronto. The final game will be against Ecuador on June 25th in East Rutherford.