The FIFA World Cup opens across the United States, Canada and Mexico over the next month, and public health experts are warning that the tournament could also become a moving target for measles. By some estimates, 6.5 million visitors will pour into North America for the event, putting a highly contagious vaccine-preventable disease on the same roads, in the same stadiums and on the same flights as the celebration.
That is why travel vaccination is suddenly part of the World Cup conversation. In Mexico, nearly 11,000 measles cases have been recorded this year. The United States has logged 30 separate measles outbreaks and 1,983 confirmed cases. Canada counted 5,081 infections in 2025 and lost its measles-elimination status in November, a setback that underlines how quickly the virus can reassert itself when immunity gaps widen.
Arjun V.K. Sharma, a physician and writer in Toronto, is among those urging caution because the risk is not confined to one country. He notes that visitors arriving in North America could pick up the virus and carry it home, carrying the outbreak well beyond the tournament itself. Kamran Khan put it more bluntly, saying World Cup-related outbreaks could reach far and wide because travelers may contract measles here and export it elsewhere.
The warning lands at a moment when measles is spreading again in the Americas and when the Pan American Health Organization has already issued an alert. It also comes as Isaac Bogoch says the world is in the middle of a massive resurgence of vaccine-preventable diseases, with measles among them. Declining vaccination rates are part of the problem, along with funding cuts to Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, disruptions in places hit by conflict and, in the United States, more ideological resistance to vaccination.
The World Cup is a sporting spectacle, but it is also exactly the kind of crowded setting in which measles can move fast. Measles, mumps, respiratory syncytial virus and chickenpox can spread through the air, and measles can remain afloat for hours. That is why health officials are telling host countries to strengthen their efforts to monitor and quell outbreaks now, before a single importation becomes a chain of cases.
The lesson from past gatherings is hard to ignore. Measles spread at the International Special Olympics Games in Minneapolis-St. Paul from an Argentine track-and-field athlete to 25 other people, including two spectators seated high in the rafters, and an outbreak of 82 cases followed the Winter Olympics in Vancouver. The question is no longer whether a mass gathering can accelerate measles; it is whether North America can keep a month-long tournament from doing the same.
