Waseem Al-Asouli spent months planning for the proudest moment in his country's footballing history. The 19-year-old software engineering student at the Hashemite University had watched Jordan reach its first-ever World Cup , and he wanted to be in the stands. In January, he spent close to $2,000 on match tickets and on an appointment at the US embassy in Amman. The visa never came, however. His application was rejected, and with it, the trip he had been saving for.
Waseem was not the only one. He says most of the young Jordanians he knows were turned away, including the 12 members of the well-known supporters' group Nashmi, who applied together and were refused together.
"So who is going to go and support the team?" he asks. His question points to a pattern taking shape across the Arab world ahead of the 2026 World Cup . As the tournament prepares to open this week across the United States, Canada, and Mexico, the fans most likely to reach the stadiums are the wealthy and the well-connected. Younger supporters and applicants from poorer or more heavily scrutinised backgrounds are being filtered out by visa rejections, while ticket prices climb to levels few can afford. The competition that has long drawn its energy from ordinary fans is at risk of losing them. The rejected In Jordan, qualification was a milestone years in the making. The national team reached the finals after beating Oman three goals to nil, and was drawn into Group J alongside Algeria, Austria, and Argentina. The achievement stirred a wave of enthusiasm among young fans. Few of them will see a match in person.
Jordanian businessmen stand a far better chance at the embassy window, and they are expected to fill most of the seats set aside for the country's supporters, a share estimated at 8 percent of each stadium's capacity. Younger applicants often learn of their rejection on the spot.
Oday Aboudi, a 35-year-old employee at the Al Hussein currency exchange centre, was one of them. He arrived at the embassy behind 15 friends, all with records of tourist travel built up over the years. Every application filed that day was refused. Oday had run bank transactions worth $100,000 over the previous six months, more than enough to cover a stay in North America, and it made no difference.
"They accept the applications of people with enormous wealth," he tells The New Arab . "They think young people want to flee to America, but America in its current state is no longer a beacon of stability, so why would I flee when I am respected and well looked after in my own country?"
Oday is now trying to resell two tickets he bought for around $750. Embassy appointment offices in Jordan require applicants to buy tickets before they can book a slot, leaving rejected applicants holding seats they cannot use. The Gulf gateway For Arab fans, the surest route to a visa runs through the Gulf. HTA, a Riyadh-based company that specialises in conference tourism, secured visas for 620 people of various Arab nationalities to attend the finals. The breakdown shows who the system favours. The company obtained 120 visas for Saudis, 90 for Emiratis and 85 for Qataris. It managed just 12 for Sudanese, five for Palestinians and 16 for Syrians.
Saeed Hussein, who heads the company's tourism division, says residence matters far more than nationality.
"Around 90 percent of travel applications from Syrians, Sudanese, and Palestinians living in Egypt are rejected," he says, "but they are accepted if the applicants live in the Gulf states, because of the strength of their jobs and travel records."
Several medical, engineering, and IT firms in the Gulf nominated employees to HTA as a workplace reward, and the applications were processed in groups rather than individually. Those fans will travel under the sponsorship of the companies that put their names forward.
Egypt has reached the finals for a fourth time, returning after missing Qatar 2022 , and the same pattern holds there.
Mohamed Faisal Abu Al-Dahab, a 40-year-old who owns a security systems and networks company, secured a visa along with 13 friends. All of them own companies or hotels and are between 35 and 60 years old.
Four other friends were rejected, one of them after entering the American green card lottery, despite holding a Schengen visa and stamps from several European countries. The successful applications were approved within two to three days.
"We all have enormous bank balances, we all have strong account records, and we all own and run businesses in Egypt," Mohamed Faisal tells The New Arab. Abdel Moneim El-Badry, who runs the Egypt-based travel agency TravX , says the 30 Egyptian fans his company helped were all aged between 40 and 60, with solid travel histories and substantial capital. The communities most likely to be turned away never reached his door.
"No one from the Arab or African communities living in Egypt contacted us to apply for a visa," he says. Out of reach Even fans who clear the visa hurdle face a second barrier at the box office.
The Tunisian commentator Issam Chaouali, writing on his official X account, called this the most expensive World Cup in history for supporters. He noted that 95 of the 104 matches had risen in price by 35 percent, and that costs had more than doubled compared with Qatar 2022.
Third-category tickets range from $140 to $ 1,410 depending on the match and demand. A first category seat for the final reached $10,990. A single VIP ticket climbed to $32,970.
Anwar Al-Qasim, a London-based economist who studies international markets, links the prices to broader turbulence. He argues that the tournament's timing, coinciding with American involvement in a war with Iran, has disrupted markets and strained transportation and aviation, dampening attendance from around the world.
"Demand for tickets will stay confined to America, Mexico, and neighbouring countries," Anwar tells The New Arab . "These prices are far removed from the spirit of the World Cup, the most popular and important sport in the world."
The gulf between those who can travel and those who cannot has opened a resale market. By 22 April, organisers had sold five million tickets, and dozens of Arab fans now advertise their seats online to anyone who has managed to obtain a visa.
Zakaria Ayoub, a 23-year-old Moroccan, has turned that demand into a business. He bought 40 tickets in February and has sold 34 of them, averaging $500 per seat by transferring the seats to buyers through the FIFA website.
"Over the past few days, demand for tickets has risen, especially from Moroccan fans, by 90 percent, with the rest of the buyers being Iraqis, Egyptians, and Algerians," he says.
Zakaria had tried the same approach a year earlier during the Africa Cup of Nations hosted by Morocco, selling 13 tickets for around $7,000. Others are simply trying to recover their losses. Ayman Abu Kaliwa, a 30-year-old nurse at Algiers' Mustapha Pacha Hospital, spent more than $500 before his visa was denied, along with 50 other applications filed the same day. He is now trying to sell tickets to Algeria matches he will never attend.
For Rizk Al-Laabi, a specialist in Middle East affairs, the ordinary supporter has become the biggest casualty of these shifts.
The fan who once gave the World Cup its spirit, he says, is now the one being squeezed out by the rising cost of tickets, travel and accommodation, and by visa rules that open for some nationalities and close for others.
"This is not just about luxury or sports tourism," he says. "It is about the right of fans to take part in an event whose standing and popular value they helped build over decades."
The danger, he warns, is that the tournament loses its bond with the very crowds that made it the most popular sporting event on earth.
Waseem Al-Asouli has already reached his own conclusion. The team he longed to celebrate will play its first World Cup without him in the stands. Shaimaa Al Youssef is a journalist reporting from Cairo who specialises in Middle East affairs This story was produced in collaboration with Egab