With the 2026 FIFA World Cup soon to be held across 16 host cities in North America, the international soccer tournament was initially expected to be a tourism gold rush.
Early estimates from the sports governing body predicted the 39-day tournament to bring in over five million international tourists to the United States, Canada and Mexico with approximately 1.2 million of them coming to the U.S.
But with the start of the tournament coming up, FIFA is increasingly canceling entire blocks of hotel rooms booked many months ago for its officials, staff and team members. It canceled, according to reports from different cities, approximately 2,000 rooms in Philadelphia, 800 rooms in Mexico City and as many as 15,000 rooms in Vancouver. Cities including Boston and Toronto have also been seeing high rates of cancelations.
“The volume released is higher than typically expected”: Hotel association on World Cup
While FIFA has not elaborated on the reasons for the cancelations, Greater Toronto Hotel Association President Sara Anghel told Canadian outlet Globe and Mail that the room reversals are “becoming a pattern across North American cities.”
“In this case, however, the volume released is higher than typically expected,” British Columbia Hotel Association President Paul Hawes also said. “It appears consistent with what is being seen in other host cities across North America.”
Related: Can Uber Snowmobile expand post-Olympics?
Others in the industry have pointed out that overbooking and canceling rooms is standard practice when organizing events at the scope of the World Cup since exact numbers of attendees who will travel become clearer as the actual date nears.
“While we were not excited about that, it’s not the end of the world either,” Philadelphia Hotel Association President Ed Grose said to The Independent. “These are rooms that are going to be put back out on the marketplace and sold to fans who want to come to Philadelphia.”
High costs and political tensions have been pushing some soccer fans away from traveling for the World Cup.
This is why tourists are not coming in for the World Cup as much as expected
The World Cup traditionally brings in super-fans who follow their country’s team throughout its matches.
But this year, the number of tourist dollars brought into the U.S. is also expected to take a hit from the travel restrictions that the Trump administration put on dozens of countries. A full travel ban is currently in place for 19 nations while fans from what has recently been expanded to 50 countries now have to pay a $15,000 bond to apply for a tourist visa to enter the U.S.
More Travel News:
- Airline to launch unusual new flight to Cayman Islands from the U.S.
- Iranian strike hits major airport, injuries reported
- Unexpected country is most luxurious travel destination for 2026
- U.S. government issues sudden warning on Switzerland travel
Many other tourists have expressed concern about the current administration’s anti-immigration focus and said that fear of getting caught up even as legal tourists are giving them pause from booking trips they might have in other years given that the costs of doing so are also significantly higher due to inflation.
“Compared to other World Cups, I’m a bit more concerned about how the hostility and the surroundings will affect things,” Thiago Pessao, a Brazilian national who has been watching the World Cup since he was a child and spent over $40,000 booking trips to locations where the games were held last time, told Deutsche Welle. “I think that the presence of ICE in the stadiums or in the cities will bring the atmosphere down.”