A 2026 FIFA World Cup soccer ball was displayed at the North Texas FWC Organizing Committee official draw and match schedule reveal at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Dec. 9, 2025.
Tom Fox/Staff Photographer
They are for sale and haven’t been sold yet, but you can’t buy them.
No, these aren’t the words of a troll guarding a bridge, but you may be excused for thinking buying tickets to the 2026 FIFA World Cup feels like a riddle.
Article continues below this ad
According to the North Texas FIFA World Cup Organizing Committee, about 60-70% tickets have sold for Dallas’ group stage matches, 55% for the knock-out stage, and 31% for the semifinal, as of Monday.
Given AT&T Stadium’s approximate capacity of 90,000 seats, that would mean there are about 470,000 total seats left to be filled of the 890,000 seats possible across North Texas’ nine matches, seats on resale marketplaces notwithstanding. So one might assume you can log in to fifa.com/tickets and easily buy a ticket for one of those 470,000 seats. Au contraire, according to hours spent inside various ticketing portals Tuesday.
A gander inside the FIFA-run ticketing website (after sitting in several digital queues and reentering a sign-in code multiple times) shows that Dallas Stadium matches are completely unavailable through Last-Minute Sales, the fourth and final ticketing wave that FIFA launched April 1.
Make Dallas News a preferred source so your search results prioritize writing by actual people, not AI.
Add Preferred Source
Related story: How are ticket sales going for World Cup matches in Arlington? You’ll be surprised
Article continues below this ad
Hypothetically, Last-Minute Sales makes available basic individual seats at their face-value price, but those are gone here, at least for now. Even for matches still available elsewhere, pickins’ are slim; for Boston’s Haiti vs. Scotland match, featuring two of the weakest teams in the tournament, there were just 32 seats available, all over $1,000.
FIFA said in its announcement of the Last-Minute Sales phase, “Tickets will continue to be released on a rolling basis,” implying more tickets will come, but FIFA won’t tell when or how many.
For those not selected through the previous lotteries, partner presales and the like, the best options for Dallas tickets right now appear to be a resale ticket or a hospitality package. Of Dallas’ group stage teams, only Sweden’s fans qualify for Participating Member Association Late Qualifier Supporters tickets, a special segment reserved for verified fans of particular countries that only qualified for the World Cup tournament recently.
Related story: As fans scramble for World Cup tickets, FIFA is ‘here to bleed us dry’ with prices
Article continues below this ad
In FIFA’s in-house resale marketplace, most tickets are going for thousands of dollars, including the nosebleeds of the nosebleeds. This is after you’ve paged through deceptive price ranges, like Category 4 for Japan vs. Sweden, which shows a range of $69.00 to $3,450.00. Spoiler: that category has three tickets for sale, all for the maximum price.
A screenshot of FIFA’s sanctioned resale marketplace showing the price of a ticket for the 2026 World Cup’s Japan vs. Sweden match at Dallas Stadium in Arlington, Texas. A high-up seat that originally sold for $60.00 is going for $3,450.00 including taxes and fees.
Screenshot of fifa.com
On SeatGeek, one of the many third-party resale sites FIFA strongly recommends against, the cheapest possible ticket to get into Dallas Stadium is a single seat high up behind the goal that’s going for $560 after taxes. In total, there are 670 listings with a maximum of four seats per listing. Most, once again, are more than $1,000.
At that price point, you might as well buy a hospitality package. There appear to be plenty of those available, though the exact number isn’t displayed on FIFA’s website. Some tiers, still, are sold out, and prices range from $2,200 for a single ticket plus a premium hospitality experience, to tens of thousands of dollars or more for suite and venue series packages.
Article continues below this ad
A screenshot of FIFA’s ticketing website showing one of the cheapest venue series packages available,. The $25,850-a-person package includes tickets to each of Dallas Stadium’s nine 2026 World Cup matches and includes premium amenities.
Screenshot of fifa.com
If you’re keeping score, you might wonder where those 470,000 unsold Dallas Stadium tickets are. Are they really all reserved for hospitality packages and Swedes?
There are still likely tickets out there set aside for sponsors and partners, and many are perhaps yet to be listed, in accordance with FIFA’s rolling drops.
The North Texas FWC Organizing Committee declined to answer follow-up questions about the sales figures they gave, and FIFA did not respond to an information request.
Article continues below this ad
While no event as popular as the World Cup is going to be cheap — FIFA says it received 500 million ticket requests during the Random Selection Draw phase alone — many fans have voiced that just some transparency would go a long way. Especially because a World Cup trip for many means additional hundreds, if not thousands, spent on air travel, lodging and transportation.
Related story: D-FW homeowners hoping to ride rocketing short-term rental prices during World Cup
FIFA, which exclusively controls World Cup tickets sales, has been notoriously opaque about the ticketing process for the 2026 World Cup. The Athletic alleges fans who paid thousands for tickets were misled about the quality of their seats, and has called out sales numbers given by FIFA that appear to conflict.
By signing up, you agree to our Terms Of Use and acknowledge that your information will be used as described in our Privacy Policy.
FIFA also recently added new, more expensive ticket categories, supplanting existing ticketholders who thought they paid for the best seats, and promoted a slate of $60 supporter tickets that really accounted for 1.6% of seating capacity, after backlash over costs. Some of those, it seems, have been posted for resale at much higher prices.
Article continues below this ad
Consumer advocacy groups, meanwhile, have gone after FIFA for “variable pricing,” where it raises the price of yet-to-be-sold seats based on demand and availability, expected on the second-hand market but atypical for direct sales.
Given all this, what can you do? Refresh fifa.com/tickets regularly and hope you get lucky with one of the random drops? Take your chances with one of the scalpers outside the stadium day-of (Not recommended)? Make peace with watching on the screen at Dallas’ free Fan Festival? Your mileage may vary.