Racist abuse directed at players on social media has risen sharply during the FIFA World Cup 2026, with FIFA's social media protection service (SMPS) recording a 13-fold increase in abusive posts compared to the 2022 tournament in Qatar.

Across the group stage alone, the SMPS identified 89,000 abusive posts — up from 6,700 in 2022, when 48 matches were played rather than the 72 contested this time around. Racism accounted for 11 percent of all online abuse detected, representing a 3 percent rise on four years ago.

The SMPS highlighted a particularly alarming trend: not only has the volume of hateful content grown, but the proportion of material classified as the most severe and objectively offensive has increased significantly.

Legal thresholds breached

More than 100 individual cases of racist abuse crossed the legal thresholds required to prepare formal case files for enforcement action. Around 1,000 accounts were flagged for further investigation, while 181,000 hateful comments were hidden from public view.

In total, more than six million posts and comments were scanned — a 33 percent increase on previous monitoring efforts — with 225,000 items referred for human review.