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Zohran Mamdani announced a series of neighborhood watch parties throughout NYC last month.Photograph: Bloomberg/Getty Images
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani on Thursday will announce that a new tranche of 2026 World Cup tickets will be made available to residents of the five boroughs at $50 per ticket. The tickets, which will be distributed via random draw, will be made available for every game at New Jersey’s MetLife Stadium other than the final. They will notably also include bus transportation to and from the event.
It is expected that a total of 1,000 tickets will be available as part of the program, totaling round 150 for each of the seven games. The tickets will be located in the upper bowl of the 82,000-capacity MetLife Stadium.
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The games eligible for the program include five group games (Brazil v Morocco on 13 June, France v Senegal on 16 June Norway v Senegal on 22 June, Ecuador v Germany on 25 June, and Panama v England on 27 June), plus a Round of 32 game on 30 June and a Round of 16 game on 5 July.
The plan marks the first and to date only time an individual 2026 World Cup host city will provide special access to tickets for residents of that particular city. In that way, it marks a return to the status quo, with residents of Qatar receiving discounted tickets to the 2022 edition of the tournament in the country.
Mamdani plans an official announcement unveiling the plan in the Little Senegal neighborhood of Harlem in upper Manhattan, where he is expected to be accompanied by community leaders.
The lottery system for the tickets will open on 25 May at 10am ET and close on 30 May at 5pm ET, with a maximum of 50,000 allowed daily entries into the lottery. Winners will be allowed to buy up to two tickets each. Notably, the initiative will be positioned as a collaboration between the Mayor’s office and the NY/NJ World Cup host committee led by CEO Alex Lasry – not with Fifa, who have control over ticket operations and have utilized dynamic pricing for that amid much criticism.
Ticket pricing has been a major issue throughout the buildup to this World Cup, with games in the New York/New Jersey garnering significant attention thanks not only to the price of admission but also the cost of getting there. New Jersey Transit, the authority that operates most of the bus and train routes to the stadium from New York City proper, initially announced that round-trip train tickets between New York’s Penn Station and MetLife Stadium would cost $150 each, when the usual far is $13. That price has since been dropped to $105 for a round-trip ticket. Buses between New York City and the stadium are expected to run $80 per ticket.
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Fifa had previously responded to criticism around ticket prices by releasing a limited amount of tickets at $60, comprising approximately 1.6% of those available for sale. The federation had initially set $60 as the cheapest possible tickets for any World Cup games, but dynamic pricing has rocketed the prices up into the hundreds for every game of the tournament.
Mamdani, an avowed soccer fan who made affordability a central pillar of his successful mayoral campaign, took aim at Fifa over the prices of admission, saying in September that the federation was putting revenues over accessibility for what should be an inclusive celebration of soccer.
“There’s just no chance for so many who love this game so much to actually be able to go and see this,” Mamdani said at a campaign stop in September. “This also has a real impact on the potential for the atmosphere of the World Cup and just how many fans will actually be there. Because so often the people who get the tickets quickest are not the ones who are actually the most eager to be there. They’re the ones who are the most excited at the prospect of a profit.”
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