If you’ve looked at World Cup ticket prices lately and immediately closed the browser tab, New York City has some surprisingly good news: Mayor Zohran Mamdani has secured 1,000 World Cup tickets priced at just $50 for local residents after months of negotiations with FIFA, creating what appears to be the only citywide discounted-ticket program announced for the 2026 tournament so far.
The tickets will be distributed through a lottery and can be used for matches taking place at MetLife Stadium, which will host several World Cup games this summer, including group-stage matches, a Round of 32 game and a Round of 16 fixture. (The allocation does not include tickets to the July 19 final, unfortunately.)
The deal is significant because World Cup ticket prices have become one of the tournament’s biggest controversies. According to reporting from The Athletic, some of the cheapest Category 3 seats for MetLife matches have recently been listed between roughly $220 and $415, depending on the game. By comparison, the lottery tickets will cost just $50—and will include free round-trip bus transportation to the stadium.
There’s a catch, of course: you’ll need to be a New York City resident to enter.
The lottery opens at 10 am on Monday, May 25, and is available to city residents age 15 and older. Winners will be selected at random and notified on June 3. Each winner will be allowed to purchase up to two tickets. To discourage resale, the tickets will be non-transferable and distributed on the day of the match.
The discounted seats came through negotiations between City Hall, FIFA and the New York-New Jersey World Cup host committee. FIFA reportedly had reservations about creating a discounted resale program, but ultimately approved the arrangement. The tickets themselves come from the host committee’s allocation rather than FIFA’s general inventory.
For soccer fans who assumed attending a World Cup match in the New York area was financially out of reach, this may be the best chance yet to get inside the stadium without taking out a small loan. While 1,000 tickets won’t satisfy demand in a city of more than 8 million people, for a lucky few New Yorkers, the world’s biggest sporting event just became a lot more affordable.
