The 2026 FIFA World Cup, hosted in North America, has generated an unexpected controversy — over language. Reports from press conferences reveal that FIFA has effectively restricted journalists from asking questions in Spanish, despite it being the second-most spoken native language in the world and the dominant language across much of the tournament’s host region.
Players including Frenkie de Jong, Achraf Hakimi, and Vinícius Júnior reportedly struggled to respond to Spanish-language questions, with FIFA instead authorizing questions only in French, Arabic, Portuguese, and English. The policy sparked a firestorm on social media, with critics calling it absurd that a World Cup partially hosted in the United States — home to roughly 42 million native Spanish speakers — would sideline the language. It is the latest in a series of organizational headaches for FIFA as the expanded 48-team tournament rolls on.
