Paul T. Shipale (with inputs by Folito Nghitongovali Diawara Gaspar)
The 2026 FIFA World Cup was conceived as the ultimate celebration of football’s global reach. For the first time in history, forty eight national teams will compete in a tournament jointly hosted by the United States, Canada, and Mexico, creating the largest and most geographically expansive World Cup ever organized.
On paper, the event represents the triumph of globalization. More nations will participate, more supporters will travel, and more audiences than ever before will share in football’s most celebrated spectacle.
Yet as the tournament approaches, a profound contradiction is becoming increasingly visible.
The country hosting the majority of matches is also a country where immigration, border security, and international mobility have become deeply contested political issues.
This reality raises a question that extends far beyond football: Can a World Cup truly remain universal when access to it is mediated by one of the most unequal features of the modern international system – the ability to cross borders?
This is not merely an administrative challenge.
It is a geopolitical question touching on sovereignty, legitimacy, globalization, soft power, and the evolving structure of international order in the twenty-first century.
Football and the promise of universality
Since its inception, the FIFA World Cup has embodied a powerful ideal that sport can temporarily transcend the hierarchies of international politics.
On the pitch, nations compete as formal equals. Economic wealth, military power, and geopolitical influence do not automatically determine victory. Every country enters the tournament with the possibility of success.
For ninety minutes, political rivalries often give way to a shared emotional experience. African, Asian, Latin American, European, Middle Eastern, and North American audiences become participants in a common global ritual.
Football’s appeal rests largely on this promise of universality.
Unlike many international institutions, which often reflect unequal distributions of power, football offers both the appearance and, to a significant extent, the reality of equal participation.
Yet universality depends upon access.
When participation in a global event becomes increasingly influenced by passports, visa regimes, and discretionary border controls, the symbolic equality represented by football begins to weaken.
The question ceases to be merely who can qualify for the tournament.
It becomes who can fully participate in the global experience surrounding it.
Mobility as geopolitical capital
One of the defining characteristics of contemporary globalization is the unequal distribution of mobility.
For decades, globalization was associated with the promise of openness. Goods, capital, information, and culture would move across borders with unprecedented speed. Humanity appeared to be entering an era of increasing interconnectedness.
But globalization has always been selective.
Capital moves with remarkable freedom.
Information crosses continents in seconds.
Multinational corporations operate across jurisdictions.
People do not enjoy the same freedom.
The right to mobility remains profoundly unequal and is determined largely by nationality rather than individual merit or circumstance.
A passport issued by a wealthy Western state grants access to much of the world. Passports from many countries in Africa, the Middle East, and parts of Asia often provide significantly fewer opportunities for international travel.
Citizenship has increasingly become a form of inherited geopolitical capital.
In this sense, mobility itself has become a form of power.
The World Cup exposes this reality with unusual clarity. Football may claim universality, but participation in its greatest celebration remains constrained by one of globalization’s most unequal dimensions; the freedom to move.
From liberal globalization to managed interdependence
The significance of the 2026 World Cup extends beyond sport because it arrives at a pivotal moment in international history.
The tournament was awarded during an era when globalization still appeared resilient and expansive. The decades following the Cold War were characterized by growing trade, increasing international travel, expanding economic integration, and confidence in a liberal international order largely shaped by the United States and its allies.
Many assumed borders would become progressively less important.
That assumption now appears increasingly uncertain.
The twenty-first century has witnessed a series of developments that have challenged that vision:
• The resurgence of nationalist politics across Western democracies.
• Brexit and renewed emphasis on sovereignty.
• Migration crises in Europe and North America.
• The securitization of borders following terrorism and geopolitical instability.
• The COVID-19 pandemic, which temporarily halted global mobility.
• Intensifying strategic competition among the United States, China, and Russia.
Globalization has not disappeared.
Rather, it has evolved into a system of managed interdependence in which openness remains desirable but increasingly conditional.
The 2026 World Cup may become one of the clearest symbols of that transformation.
When policy becomes symbolism
Concerns about access to the tournament are not entirely theoretical. Pundit and former England striker Ian Wright has labelled the tournament a “World Cup of chaos”, saying in a video on Instagram: “Every few hours, it’s another story about fans denied, player denied, officials denied, journalists denied, now refs.
“I’m laughing but it’s not funny. It’s actually not funny and something has to be said. The most expensive tickets ever, expensive accommodation, transport through the roof, “ Ian said.
Indeed, in recent years, debates surrounding visa processing, travel restrictions, heightened scrutiny of certain nationalities, and uncertainties affecting individuals from politically sensitive countries have highlighted the intersection between international sport and immigration policy.
Most individual cases can be explained through administrative procedures or legitimate security considerations.
Indeed, every sovereign state possesses the right and responsibility to determine who enters its territory.
This point deserves recognition.
Large scale sporting events involve genuine security challenges. Governments are expected to protect participants and spectators. No serious observer advocates the abandonment of border controls.
The issue is therefore not border management itself but perception.
When a global sporting event becomes associated with uncertainty regarding access, symbolism begins to matter as much as policy.
In international politics, perceptions frequently shape legitimacy more powerfully than legal explanations.
The question is not whether individual decisions are lawful but what those decisions communicate to a global audience.
Africa and the unequal geography of access
Nowhere is this contradiction more visible than in Africa.
The continent possesses one of the world’s largest football audiences. African players are central figures in elite football. African supporters contribute enormously to the culture, passion, and global popularity of the game.
Yet African participation in major international sporting events has long been shaped by structural inequalities.
Travel costs remain significantly higher relative to average incomes.
Consular representation is often limited.
Visa procedures can be lengthy, expensive, and uncertain.
Air connectivity between many African countries and major global destinations remains underdeveloped.
These barriers exist independently of any particular World Cup host.
They are manifestations of a broader hierarchy embedded within the international system.
The result is a striking paradox.
African nations compete on equal terms on the pitch and African talent is celebrated globally.
African audiences are indispensable to football’s commercial success.
Yet many Africans remain disproportionately excluded from physically participating in football’s most important global gathering.
This is not simply a sporting issue.
It reflects a wider reality in which representation and access remain unevenly distributed across the global order.
Sovereignty and the limits of global institutions
At the heart of this debate lies a tension that increasingly defines international politics.
On one side stands national sovereignty.
States possess the legal authority to regulate entry into their territory. Border control remains among the most fundamental expressions of state power.
On the other side stand international institutions and global events that depend upon predictable cross border mobility.
Organizations such as FIFA operate on the assumption that players, officials, journalists, commercial partners, and supporters can move across borders with relative certainty.
When sovereign authority and global mobility intersect, friction becomes inevitable.
The World Cup therefore reveals an important truth about contemporary governance.
Despite decades of globalization, states remain the ultimate gatekeepers of physical movement.
The authority of international institutions still ends where sovereign borders begin.
The World Cup as an instrument of soft power
Major sporting events have long functioned as instruments of international influence.
Governments invest heavily in hosting World Cups and Olympic Games because such events provide opportunities to shape global perceptions.
They showcase infrastructure, administrative competence, cultural attractiveness, and national prestige.
From Beijing to Johannesburg, Moscow to Doha, major sporting events have served as platforms for national storytelling.
The United States understands this dynamic.
The 2026 World Cup offers an opportunity to reinforce its cultural influence and demonstrate leadership before a worldwide audience measured in billions.
Yet soft power differs fundamentally from military or economic power.
It cannot be imposed but must be accepted.
Its effectiveness depends on attraction, credibility, and legitimacy.
The more a nation is perceived as accessible, confident, and welcoming, the stronger its soft power becomes.
Conversely, when international audiences encounter barriers where they expected openness, the political benefits of hosting global events become less certain.
The limits of American universalism
At its deepest level, the debate surrounding the 2026 World Cup is not fundamentally about football.
Nor is it primarily about immigration policy but about the limits of American universalism.
By American universalism, we refer to the post-Cold War belief that institutions, norms, and values associated with the United States could provide a framework for global integration. This vision emphasized openness, liberalization, free exchange, and the expansion of interconnected international systems.
For much of the post-Cold War era, American influence rested not only on military and economic strength but also on the perception that the United States represented a project with global aspirations rather than merely national interests.
The World Cup places that narrative under scrutiny.
To be clear, the United States is not the first World Cup host to confront contradictions between domestic policies and football’s universal ideals. Previous tournaments have generated controversies involving security, human rights, labor practices, or geopolitical tensions.
What makes the American case particularly significant is the country’s historical role as the principal advocate of a liberal international order.
When access to a global event becomes conditioned by nationality, geography, and political circumstance, the gap between universal rhetoric and selective mobility becomes increasingly visible.
This matters because legitimacy remains one of the most important forms of power in international politics.
States can compel through force.
They can influence through attraction.
But when the credibility of their values is questioned, their soft power begins to weaken.
A mirror of a changing world order
The United States hosted the World Cup in 1994 at the height of the unipolar era.
The Cold War had ended.
American influence appeared unrivaled.
Globalization seemed irreversible.
The liberal international order appeared triumphant.
The United States will host again in 2026 under dramatically different circumstances.
Power is now more diffuse.
China has emerged as a major geopolitical competitor.
Regional powers exercise greater influence.
The Global South is demanding a stronger voice in international institutions.
Confidence in globalization has weakened.
Faith in universal norms has become more contested.
The contrast between 1994 and 2026 reflects more than a change in football.
It reflects a transformation in the structure of world politics itself.
Beyond football
The 2026 FIFA World Cup will undoubtedly be remembered for its goals, its stars, and its historic expansion.
Yet it may also be remembered as a symbol of one of the defining paradoxes of our age.
Humanity has never been more connected.
Information travels instantly.
Markets operate globally.
Cultures interact continuously.
And yet the movement of people remains profoundly unequal.
The World Cup remains one of the few truly global rituals capable of bringing nearly every nation into a shared experience.
If even football becomes constrained by the realities of fragmented mobility and geopolitical division, then the tournament reveals something larger than the limitations of sport.
It reveals the limitations of globalization itself.
Ultimately, the most important question may not be who lifts the trophy in July 2026.
The more enduring question is whether the world’s most universal sporting event can continue to embody the principle that made it universal in the first place the belief that people from every nation, culture, and society belong equally within a common global arena.
The answer will not be determined solely on the pitch.
It will also be shaped at borders, airports, consulates, and checkpoints around the world.
For in the end, the true geopolitical significance of the 2026 FIFA World Cup lies not in the competition between nations, but in what it reveals about the world that nations now inhabit.
A world that remains deeply interconnected, yet increasingly divided.
A world still searching for a balance between sovereignty and openness.
And a world in which the future of genuinely universal institutions can no longer be taken for granted.
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of our employers or this newspaper. They represent our personal views as citizens and Pan-Africanists.
