"Football unites the world." That's Gianni Infantino's answer to one of the more politically charged situations the 2026 World Cup has produced — Iran playing all three of their group stage matches on American soil, despite the two countries being at war.
Infantino made the confirmation at the 76th FIFA Congress in Vancouver on Thursday. He didn't dance around the tension. He leaned into it. "There are enough people who try to divide all over the world," he said. "If nobody tries to unite, what will happen to our world?"
You can debate whether that framing is idealistic or naive. What you can't debate is that Iran are going, and their games are happening in the US.
Iran's Group G schedule
FIFA have Iran slotted into Group G alongside Belgium, Egypt and New Zealand. It's a group where they're realistically competing for a second-place finish — Iran sit 21st in the FIFA rankings and Belgium, despite their ageing golden generation, still carry quality. Egypt and New Zealand are beatable. Progression is possible, though nothing is guaranteed in a 48-team format where the margins are thin.
Their opener is against New Zealand in Los Angeles on June 15. All three group games are on US soil. If you're pricing Iran to advance from Group G, that home-away dynamic is worth factoring in — playing in front of what will almost certainly be a hostile or at best indifferent crowd for every single group match is a genuine disadvantage.
A Congress without Iran's representative
The political backdrop got sharper when Mehdi Taj, head of Iran's football federation, had his temporary resident visa revoked by Canadian authorities after arriving in Toronto en route to the Vancouver congress. His ties to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps — a listed terrorist entity in Canada — were cited as the reason. Iran ended up as the only one of FIFA's 211 member nations absent from the meeting.
Infantino pressed on anyway. The tournament runs June 11 through July 19 across 16 host cities in Canada, the US and Mexico, with 104 games total. Vancouver and Toronto are among the Canadian venues.
Iran will be there. Whether the politics stay outside the stadium is a different question entirely.
