The 2026 men’s World Cup begins Thursday with 48 nations, 104 matches and games spread across 16 cities in three countries, opening as the biggest tournament FIFA has ever staged and, for many fans, the least accessible.
That is why people are searching now for the FIFA World Cup schedule. The matches are about to start, but the practical question is no longer only where the games will be played. It is whether ordinary supporters can still get there, pay for it and move through the process without running into visa delays or safety fears along the way.
For one fan from Dakar, the trip was never simple. He saved for two years with the hope of seeing the World Cup in North America, knowing a U.S. visa was never guaranteed. That uncertainty now sits at the center of a tournament that was sold as a shared continental project when the United States, Canada and Mexico presented their bid in 2018 under the name United 2026, with organizers promising “three nations, one vision, one continent, harmonizing.” FIFA approved the bid that year, and the event is finally about to begin eight years later.
But the closer the tournament gets, the less seamless that promise looks. Last December, FIFA moved the group stage draw from Las Vegas to Washington to make it easier for President Donald Trump to attend, a reminder that the World Cup is unfolding in the middle of political and diplomatic currents rather than above them. The event is taking place while the United States remains in trade disputes with both Canada and Mexico, and the atmosphere around travel is shaped as much by geopolitics as by football.
That is what makes this edition different from the World Cups that came before it. The scale is larger, but so are the barriers. The article’s picture is not of a single unified festival for anyone who wants to show up. It is of a tournament that is more expensive, more conditional and more exposed to forces that ordinary fans cannot control, from border friction to the basic question of arriving safely and feeling safe once they do.
The schedule will fill up quickly once Thursday arrives, but the sharper issue is who gets to participate in the spectacle beyond the teams themselves. The games are set. The access is not. For fans like the man from Dakar, the World Cup begins with a calendar, a budget and a visa lottery all at once.
