Mamdani World Cup Tickets: 1,000 $50 Seats for New Yorkers
Zohran Mamdani announced mamdani world cup tickets on Thursday: 1,000 discounted 2026 World Cup seats for New York City residents at $50 each. The lottery covers every match at New Jersey’s MetLife Stadium except the final, and each winning entry comes with bus transportation.
MetLife Stadium’s seven-game slate
About 150 tickets will be available for each of the seven games covered by the program, all in the upper bowl of the 82,000-capacity stadium. The eligible matches are Brazil v Morocco on 13 June, France v Senegal on 16 June, Norway v Senegal on 22 June, Ecuador v Germany on 25 June, Panama v England on 27 June, a Round of 32 game on 30 June, and a Round of 16 game on 5 July.
The lottery opens on 25 May at 10am Eastern Time and closes on 30 May at 5pm ET. Winners can buy up to two tickets each, so a household with more than one entry does not get around the cap by default; it still has to win the draw.
Harlem launch with Tim Weah
Mamdani unveiled the plan in Little Senegal in Harlem in upper Manhattan, alongside community leaders and Tim Weah, the U.S. men’s national team winger and a New York native. The mayor’s office is running the initiative with the NY/NJ World Cup host committee, putting the city directly into the ticket-access business rather than leaving residents to whatever FIFA’s pricing does next.
That matters because FIFA controls ticket operations and has used dynamic pricing, which has already pushed World Cup seats into the hundreds for every game of the tournament. New Jersey Transit first said a round-trip train ticket between Penn Station and MetLife Stadium would cost $150, later dropping to $105 from the usual $13 fare; buses between New York City and the stadium are expected to run at $80 per ticket.
FIFA pricing and city access
FIFA previously released a limited batch of $60 tickets, about 1.6% of those available for sale, after initially setting $60 as the cheapest possible price for any World Cup game. Against that backdrop, Mamdani’s offer is less a giveaway than a targeted workaround: a fixed-price allotment, tied to city residency, for a tournament that has otherwise priced many local fans out of the building.
The program is the first and, so far, only special ticket access arrangement any 2026 World Cup host city has made for its own residents. For New Yorkers who want one of the 1,000 seats, the practical move is simple: enter the lottery when it opens on 25 May and hope the draw lands in your favor.
