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Raucous Protest Is Coming to the Joyless World Cup

As Trump and FIFA turn soccer’s biggest stage into a showcase for authoritarianism, activists are fighting back.

The World Cup kicks off this week: 48 teams, 104 matches, and three countries. Like nothing else humanity has conjured, the tournament unites the attention of the world. But thanks to President Donald Trump and his servile lapdog FIFA president Gianni Infantino, a pall has descended over the tournament. This is, as we have called it previously, “the joyless World Cup.” A recent San Francisco Chronicle headline captures the zeitgeist: “The World Cup was supposed to be a Bay Area bonanza. Why does it feel like a flop?” But it’s not just the Bay Area that’s feeling the disappointment. Despite the event’s featuring the world’s best soccer players, tourism is soft, hotel rooms are empty, and stadiums in the early games have swaths of empty seats.The 2026 World Cup feels not like the grandest of sporting celebrations but like an expo of greed, exclusion, and Trumpist state terror, with the threat of ICE around every corner. We are seeing the collision of the world’s most international sporting event with a white nationalist regime. 

Trump’s use of the World Cup to tighten his authoritarian grasp is hardly a conspiracy theory or a secret. In April, he threatened Los Angeles, saying, “We’re gonna have to do something when it comes World Cup time, and we’re gonna have to force ourselves upon them, which we have the right to do, because we don’t want to have any crime, we don’t want to have any problems.” He also basically put a target on the backs of the Iranian team when he said in March that he did not believe they should take their rightful place in the tournament “for their own life and safety.”

And yet, in host city after host city, Trump and Infantino’s efforts to turn the people’s game into a trampoline for authoritarianism is being met with resistance. Activists and advocacy groups are preparing for a deluge of sportswashing and potential repression. “The whole world is watching” is a go-to chant at activist mobilizations, and with the World Cup, it rings especially true. Some 5 billion people around the world will tune in for the 2026 tournament, creating an opportunity for activists to show visiting fans and journalists that the United States cannot be reduced to MAGA-style cruelty and that people are willing to stand up and fight against Trump, ICE, and the FIFA greed machine.

In Los Angeles, grassroots activists are revving up. Eric Sheehan, an organizer with NOlympicsLA, told The Nation, “Disruptions and educational interventions are the name of the game for us.” He said that NOlympicsLA and its coalition partners will carry out actions “intended to show FIFA that Angelenos won’t be as hospitable as our leaders and that FIFA doesn’t deserve to be the arbiters of the beautiful game.” He added, “FIFA is normalizing the international lawlessness and violence our nation is deploying around the world, whether that’s genocide in Occupied Palestine, the brutal bombing of 168 young girls in Minab, Iran, the kidnapping of world leaders, or threats to invade Cuba. We must not allow FIFA to wash the reputation of US imperialism and colonialism.”

Sheehan has created a replica FIFA World Cup trophy—the “FIFA War Cup”—that he spattered in fake blood and has been toting around to protests. This is a play on the bizarre FIFA Peace Price that Infantino bestowed to Trump. NOlympicsLA, which emerged in 2017 to challenge Los Angeles’s bid for the Summer Olympics, has also........

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