The U.S. will almost certainly host the 2026 FIFA World Cup successfully in a narrow operational sense—stadiums will open, matches will be played, and basic security will hold—but the country's most serious vulnerabilities sit outside the venues, in immigration processing, airport reliability, and last-mile transit, according to a comprehensive readiness analysis published June 25, 2026, by the Manhattan Institute. The report, authored by Santiago Vidal Calvo, argues that the 2026 tournament—the largest and longest in World Cup history, with 104 matches across 16 cities in three countries over 39 days—transforms the event from a sports competition into a large-scale test of national infrastructure, border administration, public safety, and intergovernmental coordination. While the U.S. entered the tournament with immense baseline capacity and is the only recent host that didn't need to invest heavily in new infrastructure, these strengths coexist with systemic vulnerabilities that could strain visitor experience and public resources.

The report identifies immigration as the most visible bottleneck facing the tournament. While much of the inbound fan base will face little friction—Canadian citizens and Visa Waiver Program nationals from countries like Germany, France, Spain, and the U.K. can travel with minimal paperwork—the tournament's "supporter core" from football-intense countries in Latin America, Africa, and Asia overlaps meaningfully with nations that require B-1/B-2 visitor visas and face long wait times or high refusal rates. As of mid-February 2026, several key consular posts showed appointment backlogs far beyond the tournament timeline: Bogotá showed 11.5 months next available, Santo Domingo 16 months, San José 13 months, and Ciudad Juárez 14.5 months. The report's "fans left out" stress-test model estimates that countries like Costa Rica, Curaçao, Argentina, Ecuador, and Panama face demand-to-capacity ratios exceeding 200%—meaning World Cup–related visa demand could amount to multiple months of normal throughput at current issuance rates. Refusal rates add another barrier: in FY2025, Mexico's adjusted B-visa refusal rate stood at 21.36%, Colombia's at 32.84%, the Dominican Republic's at 36.40%, Ghana's at 64.34%, and Senegal's at 73.96%. Three late-2025 policy choices narrowed the system further: new interview-waiver rules requiring in-person interviews for most applicants, guidance discouraging applicants from seeking appointments outside their home country, and a visa-bond pilot program requiring up to $15,000 bonds for nationals of high-overstay-rate countries—including five World Cup qualifiers: Algeria, Cabo Verde, Côte d'Ivoire, Senegal, and Tunisia.

The report warns that the central finding is that "the country's core vulnerabilities sit outside the stadiums. They sit in the interfaces between systems: visa appointments and border processing, airport reliability and domestic connections, stadium last-mile transport, local policing and federal security support, cyber resilience, and lodging affordability." The authors emphasize that "the U.S. is likely to stage the 2026 FIFA World Cup successfully in the narrowest sense: matches will be played, stadiums will open, and basic public safety will be maintained. The harder question is whether the U.S. can deliver a World Cup that feels reliable, affordable, secure, and welcoming across 11 U.S. host metros, three national governments, and a travel geography much larger than any single-city Olympics or compact World Cup." On transportation, the report notes that "the risk is less about total capacity than about peak reliability," warning that the tournament will add international arrivals, domestic repositioning trips, and fixed match deadlines on top of an already-busy summer system, while several stadiums depend heavily on shuttles, parking, rideshare, or event-day rail service rather than simple high-capacity urban transit.

The report explains that the 2026 tournament's unprecedented scale makes readiness far more important than stadium planning. Unlike previous hosts—Qatar built most infrastructure from scratch, Brazil and South Africa had limited baseline capacity, and Germany 2006 operated within a compact geography with efficient rail—the U.S. must manage the tournament across dozens of jurisdictions and thousands of miles using aging infrastructure and often-fragmented federal and state governance. FIFA officials have boasted of "104 Super Bowls in one month," with organizers expecting six to 10 million visitors to North America. The U.S. hosted 78 of the 104 matches across 11 cities, compared with three in Mexico and two in Canada, meaning most of the operational burden falls on American systems. The report contrasts this with Russia 2018, which used a FAN ID as a functional visa-free entry facilitator, and Qatar 2022, which deployed the digital Hayya card as an event-linked entry permit. The U.S. can't replicate a "Fan ID equals visa" model under current immigration law, instead relying on FIFA PASS—a queue-prioritization tool for ticket holders that doesn't eliminate the underlying capacity constraints. According to the analysis, the U.S.'s stricter visa regime creates "a significant friction unique to the American context" at precisely the moment when the country is trying to project openness. The report also flags security demands as extreme, noting that the tournament will be a magnet for hooliganism, disinformation campaigns, and terrorism, requiring collaboration across 11 U.S. cities, two national borders, and Mexican and Canadian counterparts—while state and local officials have warned that funding gaps persist and the event is "at risk of being struck by a catastrophic event" if federal coordination lags.

The stakes extend far beyond logistics. The report concludes that "success in a broader strategic sense remains uncertain and to be tested," warning that if interdependent systems fail to scale effectively, "the visitor experience could deteriorate, public resources could be strained, and avoidable vulnerabilities could emerge during the tournament." Internationally, visible failures—visa nightmares, transit meltdowns, security incidents—would quickly become propaganda fodder and diplomatic flashpoints, particularly if passionate fans from Africa, Asia, or Latin America are excluded by consular bottlenecks. The timing magnifies pressure: the tournament coincides with the 2026 midterms, the U.S. Open, the 250th birthday of the Declaration of Independence, and political conventions, meaning the World Cup will battle for attention in a crowded news cycle where negative headlines could become major political liabilities. The bottom line: the U.S. can run the matches, but whether it can deliver a World Cup that feels welcoming, reliable, and secure depends on whether dozens of agencies and governments that normally operate separately can function as one integrated system—and whether the immigration pipeline can absorb demand from the world's most passionate soccer markets without leaving thousands of eligible fans behind.