Passion, rivalry, and entertainment… For most of us, these are the immediate associations that come to mind when we hear the words “World Cup”. Gathering billions of people, from diverse languages, religions, and colours under a single canopy every four years, this event is shaped in our collective memory by football’s unifying nature—a global carnival where the masses are presumed to forget worldly crises, if only for a month.
However, as the 2026 FIFA World Cup, co-hosted by the United States, Mexico, and Canada, now passes its midway point, its American leg in particular has forced a profound debate that shatters this nostalgic narrative. It exposes the relentless use of football for political purposes and the transformation of the tournament into a major propaganda engine.
In reality, football has never been politically neutral. Attempts by governing bodies and sporting elites to portray the game as a realm detached from ideology have always been more aspirational than real. Precisely because of its unparalleled capacity to mobilise mass audiences, football has repeatedly functioned as a stage upon which geopolitical rivalries, national identities, and societal cleavages are projected. From Diego Maradona’s goals against England in 1986 to Zvonimir Boban’s confrontation with police at Zagreb’s Maksimir Stadium in 1990, and Didier Drogba’s 2005 appeal for peace in Côte d’Ivoire, the history of football demonstrates that its significance has long extended well beyond the boundaries of the pitch.
Thus, football, and the World Cup in particular, has become a political icon, and that is hardly surprising. However, the core concern of this piece is a fracture more distinct and insidious than these geopolitical tugs-of-war. Traditionally, host nations view this tournament as a unique opportunity to boost international prestige, generate “soft power”, and open up to the world. Donald Trump is doing the opposite: rather than using the 2026 World Cup as a showcase for the outside world, he is pivoting it into a domestic fortress to reinforce his anti-immigrant and xenophobic policies—a localised marketing campaign.
To be sure, mega-events have always served both external and internal political functions. In 1978, Argentina’s junta sought international legitimacy but also domestic acquiescence; Russia’s 2018 World Cup strengthened Moscow’s global standing while reinforcing patriotic narratives at home. What distinguishes the Trumpian moment is, therefore, less the existence of domestic political calculations than the apparent inversion of priorities. The tournament increasingly appears designed not to expand America’s international attractiveness, but to reaffirm a particular conception of national identity for a domestic constituency.
More than a Game: FIFA World Cups as Soft Power
From the opening whistle in Uruguay in 1930 to the 2022 final in Qatar, the FIFA World Cup has never been merely the world’s largest sporting event. This stage, which draws billions to their screens, has historically functioned as a podium for host nations to tell their stories to the international community, rebuild their national image, and project diplomatic influence. In this sense, the tournament has become a key tool in state strategies of soft power, nation branding, and public diplomacy. History shows that on this green pitch, it is not just athletes who compete, but states and competing ideologies.
As early as the tournament’s second edition in 1934, football in Italy became a direct instrument of statecraft. The fascist dictator Benito Mussolini used the tournament to project the strength, discipline, and supposed superiority of fascist ideology to the wider world. Ahead of kick-off, referees and players were coerced into performing the fascist salute; as historians frequently note, Mussolini personally interfered in the referees’ changing rooms. Italy won the tournament, and Mussolini presented the trophy as a triumph of fascism.
Even democratic hosts have used football for diplomatic purposes, as Britain’s uneasy encounter with North Korea in 1966 demonstrated. British officials wanted to impose constraints on North Korea but were rebuffed by FIFA. North Korea went on to reach the quarterfinals and win over the public.
Nevertheless, there was a darker side to this coin: Argentina 1978. The military junta led by General Jorge Videla, which had seized power in a coup in 1976, used the World Cup as a curtain while “disappearing” thousands of dissidents and committing human rights violations. While people were being tortured in clandestine detention centres just a few hundred metres from the stadiums, the euphoria from the terraces projected an image of a peaceful and stable Argentina to the world. Argentina won the tournament; Videla presented the trophy to captain Daniel Passarella, turning the public’s love for the game into legitimacy for his regime.
More recent tournaments, from Germany in 2006 to South Africa in 2010, Russia in 2018 and Qatar in 2022, similarly served as instruments of image-making, diplomacy, and international positioning.
At this juncture, an obvious question arises: if the World Cup has long been a stage upon which regimes and great powers pursue political ends, why should Donald Trump not exercise his own “right of ownership” as host?
The issue, however, is not the intrusion of politics into football; it has always been there. Rather, what distinguishes the 2026 tournament is the extent to which the World appears to be evolving from an instrument of international image-making into a vehicle for domestic politicking, projecting populist, anti-immigrant, and isolationist narratives onto a global stage.
Football under ‘Trumpism’: From Soft Power to Hard Politics
As historical examples suggest, host states have traditionally viewed the World Cup as an instrument of foreign policy and an opportunity to shape international image. From military juntas to Gulf monarchies, the tournament has served as a platform for governments to project narratives of strength, modernity, openness, or legitimacy to global audiences. While domestic political dividends have often accompanied these efforts, the overriding ambition has generally been outward-looking: to shape how the world perceives the host nation.
Yet, the 2026 World Cup unfolds against a different backdrop. Across many contemporary democracies, mobility itself has become increasingly securitised. In an age defined by migration anxieties, contested borders, and renewed debates over sovereignty, the free movement of people—once celebrated as one of globalisation’s defining achievements—has become a subject of political contestation. The World Cup, long associated with openness, exchange, and cosmopolitan encounter, has consequently become entangled in broader debates over citizenship, belonging, and the boundaries of national community.
It is within this context that the American edition of the 2026 tournament appears to depart from earlier precedents. Rather than using the World Cup primarily to enhance America’s international appeal or reaffirm its global leadership credentials, the Trump administration has increasingly framed it through the prism of domestic politics. Instead of functioning as a window onto the world, the tournament risks becoming a stage upon which the themes of the “America First” agenda—border control, immigration, sovereignty, and national identity—are projected before a global audience. In this sense, the World Cup is no longer merely a vehicle of soft power, but increasingly an arena in which domestic political narratives are performed on an international scale.
This perilous transformation manifested itself through bureaucratic barriers long before the opening whistle. Under normal circumstances, the World Cup is a global cultural festival, a vibrant carnival where borders are symbolically erased, and millions of supporters roam freely between countries, their flags flying high. Throughout the tournament, extraordinary visa scrutiny, travel restrictions targeting citizens of specific nations, and the deliberate obstruction of entry procedures have plunged the travel plans of thousands of football fans into chaos. Denied entry at the border, many have been deprived of the chance to support their countries. The tournament has ceased to be a festival where the world converges; it has become a theatre for America’s hyper-securitised border politics.
The treatment of Somali referee Omar Artan, who reportedly underwent extensive questioning before being denied entry, underscores how border security practices have begun to collide with the World Cup’s universalist ethos. This was not simply a Somali citizen being scrutinised at an airport, but one of FIFA’s elite officials being excluded from the tournament itself, challenging its longstanding claim to inclusivity. Similar dynamics emerged elsewhere, as several national teams reportedly encountered intrusive security measures, including searches by sniffer dogs, highlighting the growing tension between the World Cup’s ideal of global openness and an increasingly securitised approach to mobility.
More troublingly, the Trump administration has fused tournament security with its broader immigration agenda. The conspicuous presence of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers, coupled with intensified enforcement, has cast a shadow over the festivities. For many immigrant communities, the World Cup has symbolised not inclusion but vulnerability, turning a spectacle of global openness into an instrument of deterrence and political signalling.
The most concrete indictment of Trump’s use of the tournament as an arena for geopolitical punishment, rather than diplomacy, is the degradation inflicted upon the Iranian National Team. Under the shadow of a conflict with Iran that may have paused on paper but rages on the field, the athletes of a country on Washington’s “enemy list” were met with extraordinary and humiliating security barriers, despite playing their matches on US soil. The team was barred from lodging within US borders; throughout the tournament, the players were forced to commute back and forth from Mexico to the US for their matches, subjected to systematic diplomatic mobbing at the border checkpoints.
Consequently, the 2026 World Cup has completely forfeited its traditional status as a neutral platform capable of suspending political hostilities between states, if only for a month. In Trump’s hands, the green pitch has evolved into a crude arena of “hard politics”, a lawless zone where Washington’s geopolitical animosities are aggressively reproduced.
For the first time in the history of the World Cup, the tournament’s primary target audience is not the global public but the domestic voter base of the host nation’s leader.
Conclusion
What distinguishes the 2026 World Cup from many of its predecessors is not the presence of politics itself. Mega-events have long been used to project power, bolster legitimacy, and reshape international perceptions. Host nations have typically sought to use the tournament to enhance their standing abroad and signal openness, modernity, or relevance to the wider world.
The American experience appears different. Rather than serving primarily as an instrument of international image-making, the World Cup increasingly reflects the contours of domestic political contestation. Questions of migration, border control, national identity, and sovereignty have become inseparable from the organisation and symbolism of the tournament itself. In this sense, the event is less a showcase for America’s place in the world than a projection of debates taking place within it.
Whether this marks a temporary departure or a more enduring shift remains uncertain. However, the 2026 World Cup raises broader questions about the changing relationship between sport, politics, and globalisation. If previous tournaments were organised around projecting openness and international prestige, future mega-events may increasingly become stages upon which domestic struggles over identity and belonging are performed before a global audience. The game may still belong to the world, but the politics surrounding it are becoming increasingly national.
