CARPO Pulse
The 2026 FIFA World Cup was meant to be football’s largest and most inclusive festival: 48 teams, three co-hosts, 104 matches. Instead, its opening has been overshadowed by the convergence of conflict, security policy, and geopolitical signalling within the structures of the event itself. By folding immigration enforcement, wartime postures, and security narratives into tournament management, the principal host has eroded the longstanding fiction that football operates as neutral ground, while FIFA’s unwillingness to contest these practices has exposed deep institutional weaknesses. Football is no longer simply intersecting with international politics; it is being repurposed as an instrument within it. African and West Asian participants have borne the disproportionate cost.
