Fifa reports sharp rise in racist abuse during World Cup group stage
Racist abuse made up 11% of online abuse in FIFA’s World Cup group stage, a 3-point rise from Qatar. More than 100 cases were sent toward law enforcement.
FIFA said its anti-abuse system uncovered a sharp rise in racist attacks during the World Cup group stage, with racial abuse accounting for 11% of all detected online abuse, up 3 percentage points from the equivalent stage in Qatar in 2022. The federation described that as a “significant increase in the objectively worst, most offensive material” circulating around the tournament.
The Social Media Protection Service scanned more than 6 million posts and comments during the group stage, then sent 225,000 for human review. Moderators verified 89,000 abusive posts, hid about 181,000 hateful comments and escalated roughly 1,000 accounts for further investigation. FIFA said the group-stage total represented a 13-fold rise from the 6,700 abusive comments identified at the equivalent stage in Qatar, although the comparison is not exact because the 2022 tournament had 32 teams and the 2026 edition has 48.
The enforcement gap remains the central issue. FIFA said more than 100 examples met the legal threshold for preparing case files for law enforcement, but it did not say how many resulted in charges, sanctions or account bans. In November 2025, FIFA said it had already reported 11 individuals to law enforcement authorities in Argentina, Brazil, France, Poland, Spain, the United Kingdom and the United States, with one case submitted to Interpol.
The system was launched in 2022 with FIFPRO and is available to players, coaches, match officials and all teams at FIFA tournaments. Since then, FIFA said more than 65,000 abusive posts have been reported to platforms, a figure that points to the other unresolved question in online abuse enforcement: how much action is being taken by the social media companies themselves once the material is flagged.
Gianni Infantino said FIFA was taking “decisive action” and that “abuse has no place in our game.” The numbers, though, show the scale of the monitoring task is rising faster than the visible consequences for the people posting the abuse.
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