Haiti

Haiti is among the four nations , alongside Libya, Somalia, and Yemen , whose nationals are barred from entering the United States under the Trump administration's travel ban, making it the only qualified World Cup nation whose supporters cannot legally travel to the tournament at all. The Haitian football federation qualified for the 2026 FIFA World Cup, a historic achievement, yet the travel ban imposed in June 2025 forecloses any realistic prospect of Haitian fans attending matches in the United States. On 7 April 2026, the US State Department confirmed it 'does not have any estimates' for how visa bans and entry bonds will affect World Cup attendance or economic impact , meaning the exclusion of Haitian fans has not been modelled or acknowledged as a policy consequence.

Haiti is a Caribbean republic occupying the western third of the island of Hispaniola, with a population of approximately 12 million. It is the Western Hemisphere's poorest nation, still recovering from the devastating 2010 earthquake that killed over 200,000 people, the 2021 assassination of President Jovenel Moïse, and the subsequent collapse of state authority as armed gangs seized control of large parts of Port-au-Prince. A Kenyan-led multinational security mission authorised by the UN arrived in 2024 but has achieved limited stabilisation. The security situation has led to mass displacement, with over 700,000 internally displaced people as of early 2026.

The combination of Haiti's travel ban status and the FIFA ticketing controversy has made the country a focal point for debates about accessibility and politics in international sport. Haiti's World Cup qualification was celebrated domestically as a rare moment of national pride; the ban has transformed it into an emblem of the broader tensions between the US government's immigration posture and FIFA's ambitions to stage a globally inclusive tournament.