New York City is opening a lottery for 1,000 affordable tickets to the FIFA World Cup 2026, with winners able to buy seats for $50 apiece and receive free round-trip bus transportation to MetLife Stadium. Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani announced the program in Little Senegal on Sunday alongside Harlem residents, African community leaders and elected officials.
Entry opens Monday, May 25 at 10 a.m. at for city residents age 15 and older and closes Saturday, May 30 at midnight. Winners will be notified Wednesday, June 3, and each may buy up to two nontransferable tickets. The program covers five group stage matches and two knockout round matches, with about 150 tickets set aside for each game.
The city and the NYNJ Host Committee said the lottery was created over months of work aimed at keeping World Cup seats within reach for working New Yorkers. The tickets will be handed directly to winners at the official boarding location on match day, where the free round-trip bus ride will begin. The setup is also designed to block scalping, since the tickets cannot be transferred.
Mamdani said the goal was to make sure working-class New Yorkers could be part of a tournament coming to their own backyard. He said the city and the host committee sat down to make certain the tournament belonged to the people who make New York what it is, adding that 1,000 New Yorkers would get into those stands for $50 and a free bus ride.
Maya Handa, the city’s World Cup czar, said the program exists because the mayor wanted working New Yorkers in the stands when the tournament arrives. Alex Lasry, chief executive of the FIFA World Cup 2026 NYNJ Host Committee, said the committee pushed from the start for a program centered on affordability and access. Yusef Salaam said Harlem has always been a global village and that neighbors will now have a real seat at the world’s biggest stage.
The lottery gives New Yorkers a narrow but real shot at the tournament’s most visible matches while keeping the price far below typical resale levels. The bigger test will come once the winners are chosen: whether the city can deliver an affordable, fraud-resistant way to fill seats with the people the mayor says should be there.
