FIFA raised its top ticket price for the World Cup final to $10,990 (€9,533) during the glitch-hampered reopening of sales Wednesday after the 48-team field for this year's tournament was finalised.
The top ticket price stood at $8,680 (€7,529) when FIFA first sold tickets after the tournament draw in December.
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Category 2 tickets for the final have since risen by $1,805 (€1,566), with category 3 up by $1,600 (€1,388).
Tickets were listed for 17 of the 72 group-stage matches as of Wednesday evening, with none of the knockout stage games on sale.
Sky-high ticket prices
FIFA is using dynamic pricing for the tournament. This means that the price customers pay can change during the ticket sale process depending on demand and availability.
Democratic members of US Congress wrote in a March 10 letter to FIFA President Gianni Infantino that the use of dynamic ticket pricing “will make the 2026 FWC the most financially exclusionary and inaccessible to date”.
Euroconsumers, a European consumer rights organisation, and the Football Supporters Europe filed a formal complaint to the European Commission last month over the soaring costs for 2026 World Cup tickets.
Only $2,735 (€2,372) tickets, the highest-priced seats, were available by evening for the US opener against Paraguay. No tickets were listed for the Americans' June 19 game against Australia or their match against Turkey.
Also by Wednesday evening, only $2,985 (€2,589) seats were available for the tournament opener between Mexico and Saudi Arabia on June 11.
This price was up by $630 (€546) from sales in December. And only $2,240 (€1,943) tickets were available for Canada's first game on June 12 against Bosnia-Herzegovina, an increase of $70 (€60.72).
Fans shared on Twitter their frustration with the ticket prices and purchasing process.
A glitchy purchasing process
FIFA did not announce which games and price categories were available, leaving potential ticket buyers to search themselves on a FIFA ticketing site that often took hours to enter.
Some people who clicked on what FIFA called its “last-minute sales phase” when sales opened at 11 am EDT were directed into a queue for "PMA late qualifier supporters sales phase," aimed for a segment of fans for the six nations who earned berths on Tuesday.
FIFA did not have an explanation for why the link misdirection occurred but said around noon that the links were working properly.
FIFA also said that not all remaining tickets were being put on sale for the 104 games to be played and that additional tickets will be released on a rolling basis.
This was the fifth phase of ticket sales. FIFA said this phase, which will remain open through the tournament, marked the first time a specific seat location could be purchased rather than a request for a ticket in a category.
Infantino claimed in January that the amount of ticket requests FIFA had received was the equivalent of “the request for 1,000 years of World Cups at once.”
It was unclear if many of those requests were for seats in the lowest-price categories.
Reselling World Cup tickets
Bosnia-Herzegovina, Congo, the Czech Republic, Iraq, Sweden and Turkey completed the World Cup field.
Fans of teams eliminated Tuesday could attempt to resell tickets they already had purchased, nations that include Italy, Poland, Denmark, Jamaica and Bolivia.
FIFA also has its own resale market, collecting 15% from both the buyer and seller.
Infantino defended FIFA's cut of resales, saying the governing body was engaged in a legal commercial activity under US law.
Some European countries have laws which can restrict resale by requiring tickets to be sold for face value or only by authorised partners of the event organisers.
