The opening matches for the United States and Canada at the 2026 FIFA World Cup still have thousands of tickets available just days before kickoff, while fellow host Mexico is close to selling out its group-stage games.
Data from TicketData.com shared exclusively with Newsweek shows significantly stronger demand for Mexico’s opening fixtures compared with those involving the U.S. men’s national team (USMNT) and Canada, highlighting a notable gap in ticket sales among the tournament’s three host nations.
For fixtures involving Mexico—considered one of the competition’s more soccer-passionate participants—several games have limited or zero availability through FIFA, though more are up for grabs on its official resale site.
FIFA faces growing scrutiny over its ticket inventory management. In recent weeks, tens of thousands of seats have disappeared from and reappeared on official sales channels, while some fans and analysts have questioned whether inventory is being shifted to resale platforms to support pricing for lower-demand matches.
Mexico Pulling Ahead of Fellow Hosts
Based on figures published by TicketData.com, and availability estimates shared with Newsweek on Thursday, thousands of seats are remaining for some of the host nations’ group-stage games.
Fans can still purchase one of the 5,400 seats still available through FIFA’s official resale platform for USMNT’s opener against Paraguay on June 12, with an additional 583 still listed on its main terminal as of Friday morning.
This marks only a slight drop from 5,500 when the figures were shared with Newsweek on Tuesday, while the number of seats on the main portal has increased from 367.
The June 19 USMNT game against Australia still has around 900 tickets listed on FIFA’s resale marketplace, while approximately 2,400 remain available for the June 25 match against Turkey. Only a limited number of seats remain available directly through FIFA for both fixtures.
For Canada, a total of around 7,300 tickets are currently listed on FIFA’s resale platform for the opening games against Bosnia and Herzegovina, Qatar and Switzerland, with around 1,300 also available directly from FIFA.
However, all three of Mexico’s opening games—versus South Africa, South Korea and Czechia—are completely or nearly sold out on FIFA’s main ticketing portal, according to TicketData.com. There are roughly 1,100 available through the resale platform.
How Many Tickets Are Left for the World Cup?
The latest sales figures come amid continued questions surrounding FIFA’s ticketing strategy.
The latest figures from TicketData show that fewer than 30,000 seats can still be purchased for all 104 planned matches through FIFA’s official ticketing terminal.
However, this number has swung significantly in recent weeks, with spikes from FIFA dropping last-minute batches as well as sudden, unexplained drops.
In late May, the number of tickets fans were able to purchase from the organization dropped by 44,000. FIFA did not offer an explanation for the decline, which TicketData.com said was due to an unspecified “sudden inventory removal.”
This week, reports emerged that there had been an uptick in the number of tickets available at lower prices across resale platforms like SeatGeek and StubHub.
Some reports speculated that this was a strategy by organizers to dump unsold inventory for lower-demand games, and to avoid compensation claims from fans who had previously bought tickets from FIFA at face value.
A source familiar with the data told Newsweek the number of tickets that disappeared in late May closely matches the volume that has since appeared on resale marketplaces, indicating that they were transferred from FIFA’s official ticketing system.
FIFA has not commented on the speculation.
Thousands of additional tickets were released this week by FIFA following scrutiny into its inventory management strategy, owing to what TicketData.com said was an unannounced “minor inventory release.”
Exact figures for the number of tickets on resale sites is not available, however.
Prices on sites such as SeatGeek and StubHub had until recently been plummeting amid reports of softer-than-expected demand for this year’s tournament.
However, resale prices have inched up in recent days, rising by around 5 percent over the past two weeks and bringing the average get-in cost to roughly $580 for the cheapest seats as of Friday morning.
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