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Does Trump have the power to relocate FIFA World Cup 2026 games from Boston? Here's what to know
Donald Trump has threatened to relocate FIFA World Cup 2026 matches scheduled to be played next year in suburban Boston.
Donald Trump has threatened to relocate FIFA World Cup 2026 matches scheduled to be played next year in suburban Boston. The US President suggested that parts of the city had been “taken over” by unrest.
Matches will be staged by Foxborough, Massachusetts, which is home to the NFL’s New England Patriots and about 30 miles from Boston. The United States will be co-hosting the tournament with Mexico and Canada.
President Trump was asked about Boston’s mayor, Michelle Wu, a Democrat he called “intelligent” but “radical left.” “We could take them away. I love the people of Boston, and I know the games are sold out. But your mayor is not good,” Trump said.
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Trump repeated these threats again last week. He previously suggested that he could declare cities “not safe” for the 104-game football tournament. He could also alter a detailed hosting plan that was confirmed by FIFA back in 2022. This includes games at NFL stadiums near New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco.
Could President Trump move the matches from Boston?
World Cup host sites are not for Trump to decide. The 11 cities in the United States, as well as three in Mexico and two in Canada, are contracted with FIFA. There would be major logistical and legal issues to make changes in the eight months before the kickoff on June 11.
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“It’s FIFA’s tournament, FIFA’s jurisdiction, FIFA makes those decisions,” the football body’s vice president Victor Montagliani said at a sports business conference in London earlier this month.
However, Trump went on to say, “If somebody is doing a bad job, and if I feel there’s unsafe conditions, I would call Gianni – the head of FIFA who’s phenomenal -- and I would say, ‘Let’s move into another location’ and they would do that.”
Trump was referencing FIFA head Gianni Infantino, who is known to be a close ally. The commander-in-chief said Infantino “wouldn’t love to do it, but he’d do it very easily.”
Recently appearing on a local podcast, Wu questioned how Trump could take away the games with less than a year to go. She said almost everything is already “locked down by contract,” so no individual “even if they live in the White House currently can undo it.”
“There’s no ability to take away the World Cup games. There’s no real threat when it comes to saying cities are so unsafe that they can’t host the games,” Wu said.
There will be five group stage matches among the seven matches that will be played at Gillette Stadium in the Boston suburb of Foxborough. There will be one match in the round of 32 and a quarterfinal match on July 9 next year.
