New York City opened a lottery on Monday for 1,000 affordable FIFA World Cup 2026 tickets, giving residents a chance to buy seats for $50 each with free round-trip bus transportation to MetLife Stadium included. Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani made the announcement in Little Senegal, where Harlem residents, African community leaders and elected officials gathered to hear how the city plans to send working New Yorkers to the matches.
The program covers five group stage matches and two knockout round matches, with roughly 150 tickets set aside for each game. New York City residents age 15 and older can enter once a day at starting Monday, May 25 at 10 a.m. ET through Saturday, May 30 at midnight, with the daily entry cap set at 50,000. Winners will be chosen randomly and notified Wednesday, June 3, and each winner may buy up to two tickets.
Mamdani said the city wanted to make sure working-class New Yorkers could be in the stands when the tournament comes to the region. 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, and added that 1,000 New Yorkers will get into the stands for fifty dollars and a free bus ride. Maya Handa, New York City's World Cup czar, said the program exists because the mayor wanted working New Yorkers to be in the stands when the World Cup comes home to New York.
Alex Lasry, the chief executive of the FIFA World Cup 2026 NYNJ Host Committee, said Mamdani had been unwavering in his commitment to making sure New Yorkers could be part of the moment in a real and meaningful way. Lasry said the committee pushed from the beginning for a program that prioritized affordability and access, and that it mattered that the people who define the city could experience the World Cup firsthand.
The tickets will be nontransferable and handed directly to winners at the official boarding location on the day of each match, with free round-trip transportation from that pickup point to the NYNJ Stadium included for every winner. That setup is meant to block scalping and keep the seats in the hands of the residents the city says it is trying to reach. The hardest part may be the odds: with 50,000 entries allowed each day and just 1,000 tickets available, the lottery is likely to be crowded from the moment it opens.
For New Yorkers who have been priced out of major sporting events before, the offer is unusually direct: register, wait for the random drawing and hope the bus leaves with your name on the list. If the city’s goal is to put local fans inside MetLife Stadium rather than leave the view to tourists and resellers, this is the test that will show whether the plan works.
