New York City will open a lottery Monday for 1,000 affordable tickets to FIFA World Cup 2026 matches, giving eligible residents a chance to buy seats for $50 each with free round-trip bus transportation to MetLife Stadium. The program, announced by Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani in Little Senegal, is aimed at New Yorkers 15 and older and is capped at 50,000 entries a day.
The tickets cover five group stage matches and two knockout round matches, with about 150 tickets set aside for each game. Residents may enter once a day at from Monday, May 25, at 10 a.m. through Saturday, May 30, at midnight, and winners will be selected randomly and notified on Wednesday, June 3. Each winner may buy up to two nontransferable tickets, which will be handed out directly at the official boarding location on match day along with the free ride to the stadium.
Mamdani said the city wanted to make sure working-class New Yorkers are part of a tournament that will be played in their backyard. He said the city sat down with the NYNJ Host Committee to make certain the event belongs to the people who make New York what it is, while Maya Handa said the mayor was determined to put working New Yorkers in the stands when the World Cup comes home to New York.
The effort is one of the clearest signs yet that city and host committee leaders want affordability to define part of the buildup to the tournament, not just spectacle. Alex Lasry, chief executive of the FIFA World Cup 2026 NYNJ Host Committee, said the committee worked closely with the Mamdani administration to prioritize affordability and access, and Council Member 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 does not put every New Yorker on equal footing. Only residents 15 and over can enter, and the daily cap means many people who want in will be shut out once the limit is reached. Even so, the program gives 1,000 winners a rare and tightly controlled path into one of the most in-demand sporting events in the region, with a low price point and transportation included on the day of the match.
