The Athletic has built a calculator to help you tally up the three main costs — a match ticket, transportation and lodging. Try it out...
Use our calculator to work out how much it will cost you to attend the 2026 men's World Cup. Hector Vivas / Getty Images
FIFA Ticket Categories Explained: Cat 1 Through Cat 4 Pricing
Get free access to the most comprehensive World Cup coverage in The Athletic app. How much does it cost to attend the 2026 World Cup? The nuanced answer: it depends — on where you want to go, which teams you want to see, how close to the action you want to be and how you plan to get there.
Flights, hotels, trains, parking and more are adding to nearly every fan’s price tag. And that’s all before you have a drink or something to eat at the game. Ticket prices have dominated discussions around the expense of this World Cup.
But they are only a fraction of the financial barriers. So, to analyze the true cost of attendance, The Athletic built a calculator to help you tally up the three main costs: one match ticket, transportation and lodging. The calculator is, by necessity, imperfect.
It does not factor in expenses like food or transport — surge-priced Ubers to and from the game, or a $98 train to MetLife Stadium, or a $250 parking spot in Los Angeles. (Category 1 tickets generally include seats in a stadium’s lower bowl, while Category 3 tickets are the farthest from the field and least desirable.) Finally, adjust the sliders to approximate what you’d spend on transportation and lodging. And we’ll give you a figure in U.S.
dollars for your trip. But it uses ticket and hotel pricing data compiled by The Athletic and then allows you to personalize the calculation.
Just choose your team, city or round; then select a specific match and a ticket category. (Note: If you don’t see the calculator below, try turning off your ad blocker.)
Related Coverage
Group Stage vs Knockout Round: Current Ticket Price Comparison
Initial lodging estimates are based on hotel prices for a one-night stay in the selected city on the day of the game. All amounts are in USD. Ticket prices are FIFA’s prices as of April 2026.
Locals who won lotteries for $60 tickets — which represented around two percent of the inventory for each match, and were mostly reserved for dedicated supporters of specific countries — could, in theory, attend for less than $100. But those tickets were so scarce and hard to come by that we chose to exclude them from the calculator. For a small subset of fans, the World Cup is relatively affordable.
At this stage, Category 3 seats, which cost anywhere from $140 to $1,410 in the group stage, are the cheapest available — if they’re available at all. For many of the 104 matches, the resale market, where prices are set by ticket holders and fluctuate daily, is the last remaining route to tickets. Flights from other continents to New York could cost around $2,000 roundtrip.
Two nights at a hotel in Manhattan over the weekend of July 18-19 could be more than $1,000. (Rates on July 19, the night of the final, at Wyndham hotels within 25 miles of MetLife Stadium are, on average, about $440 — roughly twice as much as the rates on non-matchdays in June and July, according to data collected by The Athletic.) At the other end of the price spectrum, a trip to the World Cup final from outside North America could cost well over $10,000. A Category 1 ticket alone cost $10,990 when FIFA released its latest batch in April.
And if you wanted, you could spend even more on a front-row seat, which FIFA sold earlier this month for $32,970. But they could also fall for those who get creative. Some supporters have told The Athletic they plan to stay with friends, share Airbnbs, or take a chance on cheap motels far from city centers and stadiums.
In between the two extremes, there is a wide variety of potential price tags, which would increase for fans who would like to attend as a family or travel to see multiple matches. The calculator above, therefore, provides only a rough estimate. But have a play and below what a trip is likely to cost you…
When World Cup organizers FIFA first put tickets on sale last October, prices were already the highest in World Cup history. Then, over the months that followed, FIFA raised them using a “variable pricing” scheme — also known as dynamic pricing.
When Final Ticket Drops Happen and Expected Price Trends
We found that prices rose from October to November, then after the World Cup draw in December, and again on April 1. From October to April, there were price hikes in at least one category for 95 of the 104 matches; the average increase was 35 percent. The Athletic used screenshots and information captured and sent by fans to document prices for every match in every sales phase.
The calculator uses those April prices, which have held steady through May. In every category, for every match, they are more than twice as expensive as equivalent tickets to the 2022 World Cup in Qatar. In 2022, the same tickets cost $220.
Category 1 tickets for the 2026 quarterfinals cost at least $1,360 — up from $425 at the last World Cup. For instance, FIFA’s Category 1 prices in the 2026 group stage, excluding openers, range from $450 to $990. In the past, tickets that cost around $1,000 were reserved for the World Cup final or for the best seats at the semifinals in 2022.
Now, if you want a decent seat, it costs that much to watch the United States play Turkey in the group stage. To analyze hotel price increases during the World Cup, The Athletic collected the rates listed at Wyndham hotels within 25 miles of stadiums, and found that on the nights of games, a one-night stay costs about 55 percent more than on other nights in June and July. The initial lodging estimate shown in the calculator is roughly based on the average cost of a one-night stay at one of these hotels on the night of the match you selected.
Staying at a hotel on a gameday will cost you more than a typical night in that city. Wyndham hotels — brands such as La Quinta Inn, Days Inn and Super 8 — tend to be more budget-friendly than some other options, so depending on your preferences, you might end up paying more. The rate increases are most pronounced in Kansas City and Guadalajara, which only has four Wyndham options near the stadium.
In those cities, the average rate on the night of every game is at least double the rates on other dates. For the more than two dozen Wyndham hotels within 25 miles of Arrowhead Stadium, the average rate is about $390 on the nights of the city’s hosted games, compared to $150 on other dates in June and July. The rates on Kansas City gamedays are among the highest across all summer dates in these 16 markets.
Full Budget Breakdown: Flights, Hotels, and Match Tickets
The useful takeaway is how this update affects teams, supporters, or match preparation before the tournament starts. Strong World Cup coverage should make the next team, fixture, or lineup implication clear.
Readers can use the related match and team pages to move from the news angle into practical tournament context. That keeps the article grounded in what fans search for before kickoff.