When Iraq’s national football team qualified for the World Cup at the end of March, Abdulla Adnan bought tickets for his country’s games against Norway and France, which will be played in the American cities of Boston and Philadelphia this month.
“Going to a game, a stadium, a crowd, cheering and seeing my team, that’s everything to me,” he says. “It’s an incomparable feeling.”
This is only the second time that Iraq has qualified for the World Cup – the first was in 1986. But it is proving difficult to obtain a visa.
And Adnan is not alone. Fans from more than a quarter of World Cup countries are facing travel bans, tighter restrictions or high visa rejection rates, a BBC analysis of travel data shows.
Iraq is not on the Donald Trump administration’s travel ban list. Therefore, in Adnan’s case, the obstacle was unexpected.
After the start of the US-Israeli war against Iran, the US suspended routine consular services in Iraq due to security concerns in the region.
This means there is no place in the country where Adnan and other Iraqi fans can obtain visas, as they need to attend an in-person interview.
Therefore, Adnan traveled to the neighboring country, Jordan, to try to obtain a visa at the US embassy. But when he arrived for his interview, officials told him that because he was not a Jordanian citizen, that embassy could not give him a visa.
Tickets for the game and the trip to Jordan cost around US$1,800 (R$9,400).
Adnan considered applying for a visa in Türkiye, but as the process could take up to two weeks, he decided he couldn’t spend that long away from home. Gave up.
Fans from several countries told the BBC that other obstacles are also causing outrage and frustration.
One of the barriers is the Trump administration’s list of visa bans and restrictions for certain countries, including four that compete in the World Cup – Haiti, Iran, Senegal and Ivory Coast. This means that its citizens are prevented from receiving the type of visitor visa that US authorities recommend for fans.
Strict immigration policies and crackdowns on undocumented migrants were a central part of Trump’s 2024 re-election campaign. US officials say their system needs to be strict due to the challenges they face in managing the huge flow of people crossing the country’s borders.
Julien Kouadio Adonis, from the Ivory Coast fans’ association, says: “It’s a form of veiled segregation, but the proof is there. No European country has faced this type of restriction. Why Africa?”
His association normally sends a group of fans to the World Cup, but decided not to even try to go to the US because of the barriers.
While he is relieved to avoid what he called “exorbitant ticket prices”, Adonis says he believes a country that does not want to host fans of qualified teams should not be allowed to host the World Cup.
“Football is a spectacle, and a spectacle needs people watching,” he says.
Forty-two, generally wealthier, countries benefit from a visa waiver program in which applications are made online through the US Electronic System for Travel Authorization (ESTA). This costs around US$40 (R$200). There are no African countries on this list.
The visa that the US recommends for World Cup fans costs US$185 (R$930), and applicants must attend a face-to-face interview. The State Department says they must demonstrate “their intent to leave the U.S. after travel and/or their ability to pay all travel costs.”
In May, the USA announced that it would remove the requirement for deposits of up to US$15,000 (R$77,000) for people from countries qualified for the World Cup – Algeria, Cape Verde, Ivory Coast, Senegal and Tunisia – as long as they have valid tickets for the tournament.
Fans from Senegal and Ivory Coast had to secure visas until December, before the new restrictions began.
Senegalese fan Aliou Ngom was at the last two World Cups, in Qatar and Russia. For him, one of the highlights of the tournament is seeing “cultures from all over the world coming together”.
A training session for the Senegal women’s basketball team in the US was canceled last year when several players were denied visas. Like Adonis, Ngom decided it made little sense to apply for a visa as a fan.
BBC analysis of US State Department data showed that the visa rejection rate for citizens of 11 of the 48 countries that qualified for the World Cup was over 40%, including applicants of all types, not just fans.
This compares to an average rejection rate of 34% for B1 business and B2 tourist visa applications – the type recommended for fans attending the tournament – from all countries.
The data covers the period from October 2024 to the end of September 2025, therefore does not include fans who applied for visas in the last eight months. The 11 countries are Ecuador, Egypt, Haiti, Algeria, Uzbekistan, Cape Verde, Jordan, Iran, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ghana and Senegal.
Rejections
With a high rejection rate, it is difficult for fans in these countries to know whether they should risk spending money on expensive tickets before applying for a visa they may not even get.
If they purchase tickets directly from FIFA, they can resell them on the entity’s website for a fee and can also use the FIFA Pass system to speed up the visa application process.
“FIFA Pass is a positive step because it tries to get ticket holders into priority visa interviews,” says Celine Atallah of an immigration law firm in Massachusetts.
But she adds that while it makes the process faster, it does not increase the likelihood of visa approval.
“The visa system is the invisible gatekeeper of the World Cup,” says Atallah. “FIFA can sell a ticket, but the US government decides who gets a visa, and CBP [Alfândega e Proteção de Fronteiras] decides who actually gets in.”
Even with a visa, anyone traveling to the US is not guaranteed entry upon arrival, as border authorities can still refuse them.
Abu Kass is president of the football fans’ association in Jordan, a country where 57% of visa applications to the US were refused in the year to the end of September 2025.
“They’ve been turning people away for the last three to four months,” he says, adding that he doesn’t know a single fan who has received a visa. The Jordanian fans’ association in the US told the BBC it knew of only one fan from the country who had been honored.
Kass claims he took more than 42 documents to his visa interview in the Jordanian capital, Amman, where his application was refused. The US does not give a reason when it denies a visa.
“This World Cup is not ours,” says Kass. “This World Cup is not for Arabs, it is for them. If the president of the fans’ association was rejected, who will be accepted?”
A US State Department spokesperson told the BBC that the government was “prepared to welcome visitors from around the world to the biggest and best FIFA World Cup in history” and that “the majority of foreign fans did not need to use FIFA Pass because they are nationals of Canada or one of the 42 countries that qualify for visa-free travel” or already held a visa.
He stated that in all cases, “we will take the time necessary to ensure that an applicant does not pose a risk to the security of the United States” and that “we review each visa application on a case-by-case basis, after rigorous review and thorough vetting, to determine whether the individual is eligible under U.S. law.”
The Department of Homeland Security is concerned about people staying in the country after their visas expire and says there were more than 538,000 “instances of overstaying” between October 2023 and September 2024.
The Pew Research Center estimates that in 2023, before the Trump administration’s crackdown on undocumented migrants, there were 14 million immigrants living in the US illegally.
The countries that hosted the last four World Cups created special visa systems for fans, although approval of travel documents was not guaranteed.
Canada and Mexico are co-hosts of the tournament, but 78 of the 104 matches, including the final, will be played in US cities.
Canada and Mexico’s own immigration and visa systems are different from those of the United States. Neither has issued travel bans for specific countries, although Canada, like the US, has recently imposed entry restrictions on countries affected by the recent Ebola outbreak in Africa, which includes the World Cup-qualified Democratic Republic of Congo.
Canada requires people to provide biometric data for visa applications and there are two countries qualified for the World Cup – Iran and Cape Verde – where Canada does not have facilities to collect this data.
Canada does not break down visa denial rates by type or country, but its overall rate in 2025 was 54%.
Mexico does not publish visa refusal data. The country requires applicants to apply in person at an embassy or consulate.
Among the countries qualified for the World Cup, there are eight – Cape Verde, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ivory Coast, Senegal, Uzbekistan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Tunisia and Iraq – where Mexico does not have a diplomatic presence to assist.
