FIFA to reassure Iran over World Cup participation amid tensions

FIFA Secretary-General Mattias Grafstrom was set to meet Iranian Football Association officials in Istanbul on Saturday to reassure them about Iran’s place in the 2026 World Cup, a sign that the tournament’s politics have moved from the margins to the center of its planning.

The meeting comes as Iran’s participation has been pulled into questions that go well beyond football. FIFA’s official list of qualified teams already includes Iran, and Gianni Infantino said in Vancouver in early May that Iran would play in the World Cup and that its matches would be in the United States. Even so, Iranian officials have continued to seek guarantees on visas, security and treatment as the tournament approaches.

Those concerns have sharpened after Iran was drawn into Group G with Belgium, Egypt and New Zealand, with all three of its group-stage matches now scheduled in the United States. Reports name Los Angeles and Seattle as the host cities. The World Cup itself runs from June 11 to July 19, 2026, and will bring 48 teams to 16 host cities across the United States, Canada and Mexico.

The latest round of uncertainty was intensified by the fallout from the Canada visa dispute involving Mehdi Taj, the president of the Iranian federation. He was denied entry to Canada ahead of the FIFA Congress in Vancouver because of alleged links to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Both Canada and the United States classify the IRGC as a terrorist entity, making the issue far more than a routine border matter.

That is why the Istanbul meeting matters. FIFA is trying to project calm, but the practical questions are difficult to avoid: who gets visas, how delegations move across three host countries, what security arrangements will be in place, and how host governments handle politically sensitive visitors without turning a sports event into a diplomatic confrontation.

Iran’s place in the tournament is not in doubt. The larger test is whether FIFA can keep one of its biggest events insulated from the conflicts surrounding one of its participants. With matches fixed in the United States and the countdown to June already under way, the organization is being forced to show that a World Cup can still function when geopolitics refuses to stay outside the stadium.