The 2026 World Cup is exposing the contradictions of borders, capitalism and liberal democracy
The 2026 FIFA World Cup is being marketed as a celebration of diversity, inclusion, and global unity. Yet visa denials, border restrictions, and corporate profiteering have revealed a different reality. As the United States, Canada, and Mexico host football’s biggest tournament, the event is becoming a showcase for the contradictions of liberal democracy and the unequal geography of global capitalism.
For more than a century, football has been the closest thing the modern world possesses to a universal language. Born in industrial towns and working-class communities, the game spread across continents through migrants, workers, and popular culture. Unlike elite sports historically associated with privilege, football belonged to ordinary people. The FIFA World Cup emerged as the highest expression of that ideal: a global gathering where national boundaries temporarily gave way to a shared passion.
The 2026 World Cup was supposed to celebrate precisely that vision. Jointly hosted by the United States, Canada, and Mexico, the tournament was presented as a festival of multiculturalism and international solidarity. FIFA spoke of unity. Sponsors promoted diversity. Political leaders praised the power of sport to bring humanity together.
Yet before the tournament had fully begun, football’s universalist rhetoric collided with the realities of borders and state power.
The controversy surrounding Somali referee Omar Abdulkadir Artan became emblematic of the contradiction. Artan, one of Africa’s most respected referees, reportedly faced entry difficulties despite being connected to the tournament. Similar concerns emerged around visa restrictions affecting members of Iran’s football delegation and supporters from countries subjected to heightened immigration scrutiny. These incidents highlighted a reality that football’s governing institutions would rather ignore: not all passports are equal.
The World Cup was supposed to erase borders. Instead, it exposed how unevenly borders operate.
From a critical perspective, this should not surprise us. Capitalism has always produced unequal forms of mobility. Capital moves freely across continents. Corporations operate across multiple jurisdictions. Financial assets cross borders in seconds. Yet workers, migrants, refugees, and ordinary travellers encounter walls, surveillance systems, visa barriers, and increasingly restrictive immigration regimes.
The contradiction lies at the heart of globalisation itself. While markets become global, human beings remain trapped within hierarchies determined by nationality, race, and geopolitical power. The World Cup simply made those inequalities visible before a global audience.
The irony is especially striking because the host nation presents itself as the champion of openness and democracy. For decades, the United States and its Western allies criticised authoritarian states for restricting freedoms and politicising international sporting events. Russia’s World Cup, China’s Olympics, and Qatar’s World Cup were all scrutinised through the lens of “sportswashing”—the use of sporting spectacles to improve a country’s image.
Much of that criticism was justified. But the North American FIFA World Cup exposes a glaring double standard.
When authoritarian states use sport to project legitimacy, Western media call it propaganda. When liberal democracies use sport to project legitimacy, it is called celebration. The difference is often rhetorical rather than structural.
The United States does not need football to become visible to the world. It already occupies the centre of the global political and economic order. What the World Cup offers is something different: an opportunity to project an image of openness, diversity, and democratic vitality at a moment when American society faces deep contradictions.
Political polarisation continues to intensify. Economic inequality has reached extraordinary levels. Immigration remains deeply contested. Public trust in institutions continues to decline. Yet for one month, these tensions are temporarily displaced by a spectacle of national celebration.
This is where the concept of sportswashing must be expanded. The traditional understanding assumes that governments host sporting events primarily to improve their international reputation. The 2026 World Cup suggests a different phenomenon: inward sportswashing. The target audience is not merely foreign observers but domestic populations themselves.
The spectacle creates an image of national unity amid fragmentation. It transforms structural inequalities into a narrative of collective celebration. The event becomes a symbolic performance of legitimacy.
This process is reinforced by the extraordinary commercialisation of modern football. The World Cup is no longer simply a sporting competition. It is one of the largest commercial enterprises on earth. Broadcasting rights generate billions of dollars. Sponsors dominate every aspect of the event. Hospitality packages cater to wealthy consumers. Host cities absorb public costs while private actors capture enormous profits.
Football’s transformation reflects broader trends within contemporary capitalism. A game rooted in working-class culture has increasingly become an instrument of accumulation. Supporters are treated as consumers. Stadiums become branded environments. Every emotional experience becomes a commodity.
The North American FIFA World Cup represents the culmination of this process. Rising ticket prices, expensive accommodations, and escalating transportation costs place participation beyond the reach of many ordinary supporters. Meanwhile, corporate sponsors and elite guests enjoy privileged access. The language of the people’s game survives. The economics increasingly belong to corporations.
Yet football remains politically significant precisely because it still carries democratic aspirations. Millions continue to experience the sport as a source of solidarity, community, and collective identity. The game retains meanings that exceed the interests of FIFA executives, governments, and sponsors. That tension lies at the heart of the World Cup itself.
Who owns football? Does it belong to governing bodies, multinational corporations, media conglomerates, and state authorities? Or does it belong to the workers, migrants, supporters, and communities whose labor and passion transformed it into a global phenomenon?
The 2026 World Cup does not answer that question. What it does reveal is the extent to which football has become entangled with the structures of power that shape contemporary society.
A tournament dedicated to global unity has exposed unequal mobility. A celebration of diversity has highlighted the persistence of borders. A sport built by working-class communities has become a vehicle for corporate profit. And a supposedly apolitical event has become inseparable from questions of empire, democracy, and exclusion.
The lesson extends beyond football. The problem is not simply that authoritarian governments use sport to project power. Liberal democracies do so as well, often through more sophisticated means. Behind the language of openness and inclusion lies a system of borders, hierarchies, and exclusions that determines who can participate and who remains outside the gates.
Football promised a world without borders. The 2026 World Cup has reminded us that the borders remain—and that power still decides who gets to cross them.
Disclaimer
Views expressed above are the author’s own.
