We’re only six months from the biggest single sporting occasion in the world. On 19 July in East Rutherford, New Jersey, the men’s World Cup final will kick off and a champion will be crowned (although it will be hard to top the last one).

The final will be more than a coronation (or confirmation, if Argentina repeat as champions). It will also be a culmination of six weeks of near non-stop soccer played across three countries, four time zones, and 16 cities. It’s likely that conclusions will already be drawn at that point on how the whole tournament fared. But for now, at this semi-convenient milestone, it’s worth taking stock of where we are six months out.

Tickets

Short version: They’re expensive. Longer version: They’re expensive, and seemingly very popular, and those things are connected. Fifa boasted in a recent release that more than 500 million requests for tickets had been made in the recent phase, the third overall but the first to take place since the draw was made on 5 December. That follows claims of 2m tickets sold in the second phase, and 1m in the first phase.

In a first for a World Cup, Fifa is using a dynamic pricing model for tickets – a practice that adjusts prices according to demand. That means tickets for this World Cup have been, by and large, incredibly expensive. A Guardian analysis from December found that tickets for the final shot up in price by up to nine times compared with the 2022 edition, adjusted for inflation. What’s more, the steepest increases came at the cheapest price points. Fifa has also moved to control the resale market by operating its own platform, on which both sellers and buyers are charged with a 15% processing fee. In Mexico, fans are only allowed to sell their tickets for what they paid for them and below, thanks to local laws against scalping.

Fifa has claimed that these policies have been instituted to align with common practices in North America, and also to generate the maximum amount of revenue for its member associations. Fifa says this revenue can then be used to fund the development of soccer around the world. But even if you assume the most noble intentions from Fifa, there’s no question that it is pricing out a significant portion of fans.

The outcry has spilled into mainstream politics. New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani submitted a petition to Fifa to lower prices, making it a part of his successful election campaign. Several individual supporters’ groups have decried the fact that prices for the most dedicated fans are the same as those for the general public. To quell these protests, Fifa announced in December that a portion of tickets for each game will remain at the $60 price floor – an offering representing 1.6% of sellable tickets for the games.

There have also been reports of some fan groups cancelling their tickets due to the United States’ domestic and foreign policy (more on that later), but there’s little evidence that has actually happened in significant numbers.

The next ticketing window is called the “last minute” phase. Fifa has yet to announce when it will open.

Travel

World Cup travel tends to fall into three categories: Getting to the host country, getting between the host cities, and getting around the cities themselves. All of those categories will present numerous hurdles for those coming from outside North America. The primary ones being cost, availability, immigration issues, and infrastructure. Fans from other countries may also be surprised at the relative lack of public transport to stadiums in the United States in particular compared to previous hosts.

Getting into two of the three host countries is fairly straightforward. Citizens of many World Cup nations won’t need a visa to enter Canada for the tournament, but they may need an electronic travel authorization (there’s a full list of who needs what here). A similar arrangement goes for Mexico, where fans from several World Cup-qualified countries are among the list (here) who do not need a visa for tourism. The immigration policies of both countries are not expected to change dramatically between now and kick-off.

That is, uh, not the case for the United States, where a new immigration-related policy seems to arrive every week. Last week’s move by the US state department to suspend visa processing for 75 countries, which includes 14 countries who have already qualified for the World Cup, was thought to be one such wrinkle, but it only applied to visas for people who intend to stay in the country permanently.

Donald Trump’s recent travel bans specifically target people arriving from four qualified countries: Iran, Haiti, Senegal and Côte d’Ivoire. There are exceptions for athletes and officials in each country’s World Cup delegation, but fans may run into difficulties acquiring visas to enter the US. Other countries who are not subject to the travel bans but who do need visas will have to apply for the new World Cup fast-track system in order to have realistic hope of making an interview appointment with enough time to spare – US secretary of state Marco Rubio promised the system will get fans appointments within six to eight weeks. However, fans could still be denied entry to the US, and should expect stringent questioning at immigration. Fans from countries who don’t need a visa to visit the US may still be made to provide their social media history and other personal information upon entry – a move supporters’ groups have called “profoundly unacceptable.”

Flights from various World Cup countries to the US, Mexico, and Canada have surged in price, as is to be expected at any World Cup. Likewise, hotel prices in host cities have risen considerably, especially as Fifa has taken thousands of rooms off the market to house players, officials and media. US secretary of transportation Sean Duffy last year encouraged visitors to take a road trip to travel between games – something that won’t realistically be possible for a lot of fans (unless they’re OK with missing out on a bunch of games in order to drive). For example, the winner of Uefa Playoff A (Italy, Northern Ireland, North Macedonia or Bosnia and Herzegovina) will log the most travel in the group stage: More than 3,100 miles, starting in Toronto, then Los Angeles before finishing in Seattle. Group I, where every team will play in either New York/New Jersey, Boston, or Philadelphia, will be far more palatable.

The tournament itself

Already, there is a sense that this World Cup’s expanded 48-team format will have a markedly different feel than in the past, with two-thirds of teams making it out of the group stage. The pressure often felt from the very start is bound to be lower this time around, resulting in a tournament that may need a couple of weeks to really get going. Still, the extra knockout round may make up for that – those win-or-go-home games often throw out some of the best drama the sport has to offer.

For the tournament’s vast middle class – countries not as good as the big powers and not as unfancied as the minnows – making it out of the group stage is going to mean far less than it has before. For proof, look no further than one of this year’s co-hosts. For generations of US men’s players, winning a World Cup knockout game was the holy grail. This time around, winning one knockout round game will get the Americans to the round of 16 – the same place where they exited the last two World Cups they’ve played in. Is that success? Expect similar sorts of debates to surround a number of countries.

Trump

The US president has instituted the travel bans mentioned above. He has already received and kept one World Cup trophy, and looks in line for another one. He made himself the center of attention in a moment of sporting glory. He is the apple of Gianni Infantino’s eye. When asked if he would move to take World Cup games away from “blue” cities, he said yes (he has no unilateral authority to do so). And, oh yes, he won the Fifa Peace Prize.

Mere weeks after winning that prize, Trump unilaterally sent troops into Venezuela to capture their leader, Nicolás Maduro. He has deployed masked, armed forces to American cities to round up people who vaguely, possibly may be criminals, immigrants, or both (and who are often neither). He has referred to many of the competing nations at the World Cup as “shithole countries.” And he has raised tension with several European countries over the future of Greenland.

Will the US president impact the fan experience and other aspects of the World Cup? Take a guess. The only real question at this point is how he’ll do so.