The 2026 FIFA World Cup will be the largest and most digitally connected tournament in the event’s history.
Matches will be spread across 16 cities in the United States, Canada, and Mexico, with millions of fans attending in person and billions more engaging online. Ticketing, travel, mobile apps, stadium operations, broadcast infrastructure, and sponsor platforms will all rely heavily on interconnected digital systems.
Such a vast attack surface connecting half the globe makes the World Cup an irresistible target not only for run-of-the-mill scam artists but also for cybercriminals and even nation-state threat actors. Large global events reliably produce spikes in phishing, scam activity, and disruptive attacks, and there is little reason to believe 2026 will be an exception.
While football teams vie for supremacy on the surface, cyber defenders and attackers will be squaring off behind the scenes.
This article examines key areas of risk to both attendees and the event itself. First, the scams and fraud that typically target fans and travelers. Second, the threats facing the event’s organizers, partners, and supporting infrastructure.
And finally, a look at real-world cybersecurity incidents tied to past World Cups and other major sporting events.
Why large sporting events attract cybercriminals
People go nuts for sports. Lots of people. And lots of people surging toward the same thing at once creates an opportunity for criminals to victimize the masses.
Like pickpockets targeting stadium crowds or densely packed festival grounds, cybercriminals take advantage of the huge influx of fans accessing the same digital systems associated with big events.
Huge global sporting events have an incredibly wide attack surface, both in the front and back ends. The events are massive undertakings, creating incalculable direct and indirect vulnerabilities across both physical and virtual planes to meet fan demand.
Scammers prepare in advance by targeting the consumer-facing ecosystem of websites and services, such as ticket sales or hotel and travel booking. More sophisticated attackers might instead organize a campaign to compromise the event organizers' infrastructure, or even the event itself.
Whatever the scale, the potential for cybercrime increases wherever a crowd gathers.
Phishing and spoofing: The most common scam vectors targeting World Cup attendees
Phishing through fake websites
World Cup fans will interact with a staggering number of digital interfaces in their pursuit of event tickets, hotel bookings, airline reservations, travel packages, and the myriad other services they’ll need to support their attendance at one or more host cities. Each interface creates an opportunity for an attacker.
If it's something a user can click, type into, or receive a message from, it can be used for phishing.
Phishing websites that mimic the sites of legitimate services related to the World Cup are the most visible scam affecting fans. These malicious sites are set up by attackers in advance of the event, in hopes that victims mistake them for the real thing and submit payment details and other sensitive personal information to purchase event tickets or make reservations.
For the World Cup and other large events, two factors compound the already high success rate phishing enjoys:
- The extreme visibility and marketing presence of the event affords attackers a wide canvas of available branding fodder to mimic ahead of time. All digital services and websites associated with the World Cup, including the FIFA brand itself, are potential targets for malicious phishing.
- The makeup of World Cup attendees is a broad, global representation of people from all backgrounds. Compared to other population subsets, they may not know the fundamentals of cybersecurity hygiene, including how to spot phishing attempts made against them.
A fraudulent website set up for phishing typically uses a web domain that closely resembles the legitimate domain it’s mimicking, a practice known as domain squatting. As interest in the World Cup continues to increase up until its June 11 kickoff, innocent people will continue to be victimized by these fraudulent sites. All it takes for an attacker to take advantage of the event is to:
- Continue purchasing web domains that look similar enough to the real thing.
- Copy the branding and site layout.
- Wait for victims to use their site.
Law enforcement agencies and security researchers have already warned about dozens of fraudulent FIFA-themed domains and ticket scams appearing well ahead of the 2026 tournament.
Phishing for World Cup fans doesn’t mean just impersonating websites that sell tickets to the World Cup. In late May 2026, the FBI issued a public alert describing dozens of spoofed websites impersonating official FIFA platforms, designed to steal personal and financial information from fans attempting to purchase hospitality package tickets.
If you or your organization has any doubt about the legitimacy of a website, validate it before navigating to it by submitting it to a trusted URL-scanning tool, like VirusTotal.
Phishing through messages and social media
Phishing topped the FBI’s Internet Crime Report’s count of cybercrime complaints last year, for good reason. It’s an easy means of social engineering with a low barrier of entry: impersonate a trusted service and establish contact with a potential victim.
Phishing websites aren’t the only fraudulent front-end fans will need to watch out for. Attackers can build automated phishing campaigns through any arbitrary messaging app or service, including:
- SMS
- WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal, or any other app capable of direct or group messaging
Attackers can use these platforms to message event attendees while impersonating legitimate entities associated with the World Cup. Many of these platforms support the creation of communities that often grow into the de facto authoritative sources of information for different events, such as football.
On widely adopted platforms like WhatsApp, which is especially popular in the football-loving EMEA, users may be more susceptible to phishing messages impersonating well-known messaging channels and groups within sporting and football subcultures.
Worse, the 2026 World Cup will be one of the first global events to occur amid a renaissance in phishing technology. AI has effectively eliminated telltale translation errors and other hallmarks of phishing messages, making them that much harder to identify.
Attackers will even go as far to purhase online ads directing users to their phishing sites (or even lacing them with malicious code) or manipulating SEO rankings to ensure their sites are served first on a list of search results.
Wi-Fi spoofing
Another overlooked but often exploited risk is insecure or malicious Wi-Fi networks near event stadiums, fan zones, hotels, airports, and throughout the cities hosting the World Cup.
Insecure Wi-Fi is always a risk, but when a giant sporting event is coming to town, you can be sure cybercriminals have already scouted where they’ll set up shop.
During the World Cup, an attacker can take advantage of fans desperate for a W-Fi connection by either surreptitiously sniffing packets on nearby, public Wi-Fi networks or going the extra mile and deploying a rogue access point (AP) on their own (while perhaps choosing to name their SSID something innocuous and tempting, like “Public Wi-fi for World Cup Fans”).
Unsuspecting users who connect risk all their unencrypted network traffic being captured.
Some attackers may even configure their AP to automatically redirect users to a captive portal, a web page commonly used to authenticate public Wi-Fi users, usually to control their bandwidth usage.
Victims will often not think twice about signing up and logging in, only to have their entire network session compromised. A World-Anti-Doping Agency official fell victim to just that during the 2016 Summer Olympics.
Cyber threats facing organizers, sponsors, and World Cup infrastructure
While soccer fans can be expected to face attacks against their wallets, FIFA, their corporate partners, and even the infrastructure supporting the event itself should brace for much more sophisticated attacks.
Large events like the World Cup are attractive criminal targets not only because of their massive number of fans, but also because of their wide, distributed digital surface spanning hundreds or thousands of supporting organizations.
Amid heightened global tensions, what’s slated to be a World Cup of unprecedented scale is at risk of major cybersecurity incidents.
Every service, third-party, and digital integration established and interconnected with the World Cup is a potential exploitable entry point. The list of potential targets for compromise or distribution ranges from the expected to the esoteric.
Some of them include:
- Ransomware to hold the event hostage and pressure organizers to pay
- Supply chain compromise against third-party vendors and suppliers who are less likely to have adequate cyber defenses in place
- Disruptions against local logistics, transportation systems, and emergency services, inciting safety concerns
- Network compromise that results in petty financial gain and, in a past case, stolen event tickets
- Sensitive data theft thanks to interfaces exposed by a third-party partner
Event organizers aren’t deaf to reality: FIFA will certainly partner with multiple security agencies to give the 2026 World Cup its best shot at staying secure.
During the 2024 Summer Olympic Games, France’s Cybersecurity Agency, Agence Nationale de la Sécurité des Systèmes d’Information, deployed a team of 630 cybersecurity experts to cover the event and secure nearly 500 companies and infrastructure facilities.
Expect a similar amount of defense for the World Cup.
But the risks and targets listed above show that even if the event itself remains relatively unscathed, the rapidly constructed ecosystem of supporting services built in the event’s orbit may prove more of a prime target than the games themselves.
Cyber incidents from past global sporting events
Event organizers are used to being attractive targets for cybercrime, and every year they come more prepared than ever. But history shows that even the most well-funded, prestigious events are still susceptible to something falling through the cracks.
Take a look at this list of security incidents from recent years to see why organizers are forced to stay on their toes at every event.
PyeongChang 2018 Winter Olympic Games
The “Olympic Destroyer” malware disrupted Wi-Fi, ticketing, and broadcast systems during the Opening Ceremony.
The attack, purportedly as revenge for Russia’s exclusion from the event, demonstrated how destructive malware can be used for disruption rather than financial gain.
Qatar 2022 FIFA World Cup
A China-linked threat actor compromised a telecommunications provider supporting the tournament months before the event.
Routers owned by the provider were maliciously modified, resulting in stolen data. Thankfully no harm befell the World Cup itself, despite the auditors who discovered the breach only receiving full access to the environment months after the event ended.
Paris 2024 Summer Olympic Games
French authorities recorded more than 140 cyber incidents during the Games, including phishing and denial-of-service attempts, despite their extensive security coverage mentioned above.
Their massive investment in preparation and real‑time monitoring prevented these incidents from causing any major disruption.
Zero Trust: An unbreakable goalkeeper
Cybercriminals are gunning to score against the 2026 World Cup. Strong reactive security controls will certainly be in play in all positions on the field, but even then, they’ll have to be at their sharpest to vie against some of the world’s best players.
But what if instead of investing huge amounts of time and expertise on protecting the pitch, you simply close the stadium? There’s no playing field to level if you stop players from entering at the entrance gate.
The core principles of Zero Trust are meant to stop attacks before they start.
To block ransomware, enforce strict Allowlisting policies that stop all unknown applications and scripts from running. To prevent attackers gaining a foothold inside an environment, Privileged Access Management stops privilege escalation after credential theft, so attackers have less room to work. Finally, Web Content Control can block new domains and suspicious categories that haven’t been previously approved to help protect against phishing sites.
Instead of changing the game, Zero Trust deletes it entirely.
