New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced that a new tranche of 2026 World Cup tickets will be made available to residents of the five boroughs at $50 per ticket. A total of 1,000 tickets will be available as part of the program, with a block of about 150 tickets for each of the seven games.
They will be distributed via random draw, and will be for every game at New Jersey’s MetLife Stadium other than the final. They will also include bus transportation to and from the event. The tickets will be located in the upper bowl of the 82,000-capacity MetLife Stadium.
“1,000 World Cup tickets. $50 each. All for New Yorkers. We fought hard to make the people’s game available to the people — and won. Let the summer of soccer begin,” Mamdani said in an X post.
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The games eligible for the program include five group games (Brazil v. Morocco on June 13, France v. Senegal on June 16, Norway v. Senegal on June 22, Ecuador v. Germany on June 25 and Panama v. England on June 27), plus a Round of 32 game on June 30 and a Round of 16 game on July 5.
The plan was unveiled on Thursday in the Little Senegal neighborhood of Harlem in Upper Manhattan. Mamdani was accompanied by community leaders, as well as Tim Weah and Mark McKenzie, two members of the U.S. men’s national team who are also New York natives.
This marks the first — and to date, only — time a 2026 World Cup host city provides its residents special access to tickets. This is, however, similar to the 2022 World Cup where the host nation, Qatar, gave its residents discounted tickets.
The lottery system for the tickets will open on May 25 at 10 a.m. Eastern Time and close on May 30 at 5 p.m. ET, with a maximum of 50,000 allowed daily entries into the lottery. Winners will be allowed to buy up to two tickets each. The tickets are non-transferable and will be given to winners on the day of the games.
This program has been positioned as a collaboration between the mayor’s office and the NY/NJ World Cup host committee. Ticket pricing had been seen as a major issue for this world cup, especially with games in the New York/New Jersey area, which drew attention for both the ticket pricing, and cost of transport.
READ: FIFA World Cup 2026 has a huge problem: Americans don’t even know it’s happening (May 14, 2026)
Mamdani, who says he is a soccer fan, had criticized FIFA last year for the price of admission.
“There’s just no chance for so many who love this game so much to actually be able to go and see this. This also has a real impact on the potential for the atmosphere of the World Cup and just how many fans will actually be there. Because so often the people who get the tickets quickest are not the ones who are actually the most eager to be there. They’re the ones who are the most excited at the prospect of a profit,” he said during his 2025 campaign, of which affordability was his central talking point.