Will the 2026 World Cup bring tourists back to America?

[NEW YORK] This summer’s World Cup will bring millions of football lovers to stadiums across North America. But whether it lives up to organisers’ lofty expectations could come down to fans like Brett Shields and John Milce of New South Wales, Australia.

Both men are long-time supporters of the Socceroos, their country’s men’s national soccer team, and both have travelled to the World Cup before. But only one is planning to go to this year’s tournament, which runs from Jun 11 to Jul 19 in the US, Canada and Mexico.

Shields, 59, is coming. He already has the proper travel authorisation from past visits to see his daughter, who lives in San Francisco. He plans to stay with her and attend Socceroos matches there and in Seattle.

Milce, 76, who has been to six World Cups since 1966, is staying home. He said he had made comments online about US President Donald Trump’s policies, and feared he could be denied entry at the border because of the administration’s proposed social media checks and broader immigration crackdown.

“I’m not a poor man, but with the costs involved, it was too much to risk,” Milce added.

With the first kick-off less than 60 days away, tourism and hospitality leaders in the 11 US host cities are watching international fans closely. The US was the only major nation to register a decline in international tourism in 2025, and hints of lacklustre demand have anxiety running high.

The research firm Tourism Economics projects that more than 1.2 million international visitors will travel to the US for the World Cup. That includes nearly 750,000 who would not have otherwise come, amounting to a roughly 1.1 percentage point increase in international arrivals.

Still, the firm this month revised down its forecast for the rate of recovery from last year’s drop in tourists. Visa restrictions, fears of immigration agents (including at World Cup matches), an increase in phone searches at borders and, for fans, the exorbitant costs of match tickets and transportation are just some of the barriers keeping people away.

Shields shared that if he did not already have his travel authorisation and a free place to stay, “I doubt whether I’d probably travel over to the World Cup in the current climate.”

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Safety concerns and travel bans

The World Cup, which drew 3.4 million spectators in Qatar in 2022, is a blockbuster pretty much by definition, and organisers expect a large share of bookings, both domestic and international, to come in the final two months.

The US Travel Association said this month that the World Cup has “extraordinary potential to deliver major economic gains” across the US, but added that “safety concerns, policy perceptions and entry barriers could limit America’s ability to fully capitalise on the opportunity”.

In Seattle, the number of expected domestic World Cup visitors has grown by 30 per cent since 2024, said Michael Woody, chief engagement officer for Visit Seattle. At the same time, the expected number of international visitors has fallen by 17 per cent, driven by a particularly sharp drop-off in Canadians.

Fans coming from countries like Haiti and Iran, on a list of 19 countries whose citizens Trump has barred from entering the US, will not be able to attend their national teams’ group stage matches at all. Supporters of football powerhouses like Ivory Coast and Senegal, among the 14 African nations whose citizens face tight visa restrictions, could be forced to post bonds of up to US$15,000 to enter the country.

Adem Asha, 32, a Turkish citizen who lives in Slovakia, obtained a US visa last year in order to watch Lionel Messi, of Argentina, and Cristiano Ronaldo, of Portugal, in what could be their last World Cup. But Asha, who was born in Syria, worried he could still be targeted by immigration agents. He decided this spring to call off his trip, a conclusion that left him “disappointed but also relieved”.

“I really don’t feel like going there, or spending that much money to go there, and then being denied at the port of entry,” added Asha, who said he did not consider going to Canada or Mexico because the matches he wanted to see, and the other sites he hoped to visit, were all in the US.

Banking on late bookings

US host cities are pinning their hopes on last-minute travellers. Zane Harrington, a spokesperson for Visit Dallas, said that he expected “a majority” of fans heading to the city to book their stays in the two months remaining before kick-off – or even during the tournament as teams advance out of the group stage.

Martha Sheridan, the CEO of Meet Boston, the city’s marketing and tourism organisation, said that ticket sales for Gillette Stadium’s seven matches were “robust”, and that they were split roughly in thirds among New Englanders, domestic visitors from the rest of the country and international travellers.

Demand for hotels in Boston in June is up about 11 per cent compared with the same period last year, she pointed out. That increase was smaller than what her team had expected to see by this point when it began planning in 2024, she added, but she felt “very optimistic” that bookings would continue to rise in the coming weeks.

Fifa, the sport’s global governing body, in recent weeks released blocks of thousands of hotel rooms across the three host countries, while local host committees downsized fan festivals in locations including New Jersey, San Francisco and Seattle, fuelling discussion over whether demand was falling short of expectations.

But Jamie Lane, chief economist and senior vice-president for analytics at AirDNA, a company that collects and analyses short-term rental data, said that it was common practice for major event hosts to scale back their room blocks as they make final preparations for staffing and sponsorships, and that the changes were not a sign of sluggish demand.

A spokesperson for Fifa said that the changes to fan festivals were not made in response to demand, noting that some of the events will now take place in several neighbourhoods rather than in a large central location.

A bigger, less predictable event

Data published this month by AirDNA showed a rise in short-term rental bookings, to varying degrees, in every host city. Bookings on group stage game days were up the most in Monterrey, Mexico, rising 564 per cent, on average, compared with the same dates last year.

Bookings were up 209 per cent in Mexico City, 171 per cent in Kansas City, 152 per cent in Miami and 52 per cent in Toronto, according to AirDNA.

A range of factors, including which teams are competing and to what extent cities regulate short-term rentals, influence those figures.

In San Francisco, where short-term rental bookings were up 28 per cent on group stage game days, Anna Marie Presutti, CEO of the San Francisco Travel Association, said she thought demand did not rise to its full potential because the war in Iran is complicating travel for fans from Jordan and Qatar, two teams that are playing there.

In New York, where short-term rentals are tightly restricted, hotel bookings during the World Cup period are “more or less the same” compared with the same period last year, according to Vijay Dandapani, CEO of the Hotel Association of New York City.

International travellers generally stay longer and spend more money than Americans, giving them an outsize economic impact. An analysis published by Airbnb in February found that non-Americans coming to the US for the World Cup planned to visit more destinations and travel three nights longer, on average, than Americans.

Sylvia Weiler, president of global destinations at the travel marketing and data company Sojern, said that the revamped structure of this World Cup – spread across three countries and featuring a record 48 teams – made it hard to project how travel patterns would play out as the tournament approached.

“We talk about what was expected,” Weiler noted. “I would always put a slight caveat, because we did not know what to expect.” NYTIMES