Promises of a safe and welcoming 2026 World Cup – but Qatar’s failures still echo

During half time of a 2022 men’s football World Cup match in Qatar, I witnessed eight security officers conducting a full body search of a female fan. They eventually lifted her trousers at the ankle, revealing a pair of rainbow-colored socks – which the officers made her remove before allowing her to return to the stands.

This happened despite repeated public assurances from Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) to fans’ groups over the decade before the World Cup that rainbow colors would be permitted at the tournament. The incident is emblematic of the arbitrary treatment sports fans can face in the absence of proper safeguards.

As the 2026 FIFA World Cup in Canada, the United States, and Mexico approaches – similar concerns persist. With 75 percent of the matches taking place on US soil, fans may face a range of human rights risks, from abusive immigration raids and arbitrary detention to racial profiling, and discriminatory visa bans for dozens of countries. The US government’s World Cup task force has promised the “safest and most welcoming sporting event in history," but FIFA’s past failures to protect fans warn that could be another story once the first whistle blows.

In Qatar, where same-sex relations are criminalised and where LGBT people have been subjected to ill‑treatment in detention, widespread and unjust confiscations of rainbow-colored paraphernalia in stadiums became a tournament-defining issue. Prior to the tournament, FIFA held multiple awareness trainings with the Qatari government, including on LGBT rights. Yet, when the late journalist Grant Wahl arrived at the Ahmad bin Ali Stadium wearing a rainbow-colored football t-shirt, he said he was detained and told to remove the t-shirt by security officers, who claimed it was “political." He was later released.

Throughout the tournament, before entering World Cup stadiums, scores of Welsh fans were reportedly forced to remove and discard their “Rainbow Wall” bucket hats – an important symbol of inclusivity and solidarity with the Welsh LGBTQ+ supporters and allies group. Having repeatedly assured fans that rainbow flags would be permitted at the tournament, FIFA failed to issue a corrective statement acknowledging these risks, leaving fans feeling intimidated and exposed to arbitrary treatment.

FIFA’s experience in Qatar did not result in the kind of progress many hoped for. Ahead of the 2025 FIFA Club World Cup in the US – billed as a “trial run” for this summer’s tournament – FIFA scrapped planned anti-discrimination messaging, which rights groups and fans denounced as a serious “step backward." The tournament saw incidents of homophobic chanting at the July 2 Dortmund-Monterrey match in Atlanta, Georgia.

Human Rights Watch also documented the arrest and transfer to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents on July 13, 2025, of a non-US citizen fan who was attending the tournament with his children. He was initially detained for a minor offense, before being handed over to ICE, locked up for months in an ICE detention center in Newark, and then returned to his country of origin. The case raises serious questions about the intersection of immigration enforcement and access to major sporting events.

FIFA recently announced that it plans to restore anti-discrimination messaging for the World Cup, following a spate of harrowing incidents of racism and homophobia in world football, including the alleged discriminatory abuse directed at Real Madrid’s Vinícius Júnior. But many fans – particularly non-US citizens, LGBTQ+ people, or those who engage in certain kinds of political protest – continue to be at risk from the Trump administration’s abusive policies.

Ambassador of Athlete Ally, an LGBTQ+ athlete support group, and former professional player Matthew Pacifici told Human Rights Watch that, “LGBTQ+ players and fans need more than symbolic gestures – we need enforceable protections ... Players and fans must know that FIFA will protect them, not abandon them.”

FIFA’s Human Rights Policy commits the organisation to respect freedom of expression and ensure non-discrimination. To give these commitments substance, FIFA should also establish a formal human rights monitoring mechanism, with independent oversight, engagement with civil society, and public reporting, for the duration of the tournament.

To learn lessons from human rights failures in Qatar and the 2025 Club World Cup, FIFA should work with the Trump administration to put in place stronger protections for players and fans. This should include securing a public commitment to refrain from immigration enforcement operations at all World Cup events and venues; and doing everything possible to ensure that all qualified teams, media, visitors, and fans will have equal access to the tournament regardless of nationality, religion, gender, or opinion.

Without such measures, FIFA risks once again falling short of its own promises.