African Journalists Blocked From the FIFA World Cup: How US Visa Policy Is Rewriting the Rules of Press Access at a Global Event

The International Sports Press Association issued a public call on June 6, 2026, demanding that FIFA intervene with the US government to ensure that accredited journalists denied visas or issued inadequate entry permits can cover the tournament. AIPS President Gianni Merlo wrote directly to FIFA's Director of Media Relations and Head of Media Operations, citing cases of Iranian journalists, African journalists, and others who hold valid FIFA media accreditation but have been unable to obtain the US entry documents required to use it. Some journalists received single-entry visas, meaning that if they followed their national team to a match in Canada or Mexico, they could not re-enter the United States for subsequent games. The letter was sent on June 5. With the tournament days from its opening, the window for resolution is narrow.

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The structural issue is the disjunction between FIFA's accreditation authority and the United States government's sovereign immigration authority. FIFA controls who is credentialled to cover the tournament. It cannot compel the US Department of State to issue visas. When it accepted the United States as a co-host, it accepted the condition that entry to the primary host country would be governed by US immigration law rather than by the tournament's own access framework. That is the source of the conflict.

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The journalists most affected are from countries with which the United States has complicated diplomatic relationships. Iranian journalists are specifically named. African journalists are identified as a group experiencing significant access problems. US visa refusal rates are correlated with country of passport, and journalists from Iran, parts of sub-Saharan Africa, and other regions that the State Department's risk profiling treats as elevated face substantially higher refusal rates than journalists from Western Europe or North America. Holding a FIFA World Cup media credential does not override those risk assessments.

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What the AIPS letter reveals is the extent to which FIFA has limited leverage over the host government on this issue. FIFA can advocate. It cannot compel. The US government's visa authority is a condition that any World Cup host brings to the tournament, and the bidding process does not require hosts to demonstrate that they can guarantee entry to all accredited media from all countries.

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The economic dimension compounds the human cost. Journalists who received visa denials late in the planning process have already purchased non-refundable travel and booked accommodation. The AIPS letter notes that affected reporters face significant additional expenses as a result of denials that came after all those commitments were made. The financial burden falls disproportionately on journalists from lower-income countries whose newsrooms cannot absorb the loss as easily as large Western broadcast operations.

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The contradiction at the heart of this story is one the United States hosts regularly without resolution. It positions press freedom as a core democratic value, hosts the largest sporting event in the world, and simultaneously operates a visa system that filters who can witness that event based on country of origin. African journalists covering African national teams at a tournament their countries qualified for, who hold valid FIFA credentials, who booked travel in good faith, cannot attend because the host country's immigration risk calculus does not accommodate the political message that hosting a global event is supposed to send.