FIFA reveals scale of offensive comments linked to 2026 World Cup

FIFA has revealed the scale of offensive content linked to the 2026 World Cup, highlighting abuse directed at teams on social media and the moderation work carried out around the competition.

France was the team most exposed to insults on these platforms, with more than 18,000 cases. England followed. To compile the figures, the player protection service examined more than 17 million posts and comments related to the competition. After human review, 240,000 cases were classified as offensive.

The categories identified show the prevalence of racism, which accounted for 20% of the insults. Threats of violence made up 14%, while xenophobia represented 12%.

Moderation also took place before many messages became publicly visible. The tools hid 9.2 million offensive comments among the 60.7 million monitored on the official accounts of FIFA and participating federations. The figures show both the volume of content reviewed and the amount removed before it could be seen by the public.