FIFA World Cup 2026 Lottery Payment Guide: How to Avoid "Card Declined" & Losing Your Tickets.

For those who didn't book their FIFA tickets as soon as they went on sale, there was another option: the FIFA Random Selection Draw, which is a kind of lottery. Only a few lucky people manage to get tickets through this method. However, today's date is January 21, 2026, and the draw applications closed on January 13th, meaning it's now difficult to get tickets. The biggest concern now is for those who registered for the FIFA Random Selection Draw; they are quite anxious about whether they will receive a ticket or not. They are constantly checking their emails, hoping to see a "You Won" notification. Who will get tickets and who won't will only be known when the results are announced in February. Until then, don't trust any emails claiming you've won.

Now, let's say you've been selected and you receive an email saying, "Congratulations, you've been selected."  What do you do next? This is the most important part. Because if you think this is an easy step that you can ignore, you could suffer a significant loss, so be careful.

It's not like before, where you had to manually go through the entire process of booking tickets or making payments. With time, some technical changes have been made to FIFA ticket booking. Everything is now done on time and very quickly. If you are selected in the draw, the payment will be automatically deducted from your credit/debit card. But if your payment is declined even once, you won't get the ticket, and you'll have to try again in the next phase, starting from scratch.

Look, it's probably happened to you many times that your payments have been declined in a hurry, sometimes due to insufficient funds, a bank glitch, or some other reason. So, if something like this happens during FIFA ticket booking, there's no second chance; your ticket won't be confirmed under any circumstances.

Now, let's understand why this problem might arise. There are several reasons, such as the bank receiving an international transaction request and canceling it due to suspected fraud, or your card's daily limit being insufficient, or high charges for foreign merchants, or international payments being disabled on your card. In any of these cases, your transaction will be declined, and you'll miss out on a great opportunity to get a ticket.

Quick Answer:

• The FIFA World Cup 2026 lottery payment process will begin on February 9, 2026.
• You will receive your result shortly before the payment is processed.
• If the payment is declined, there will be no retry or refund.
• To avoid this issue, visit or call your bank today and request that they allow international online transactions.
• Also, request an increase in your online payment and daily transaction limits.
• Inform your bank in advance that they should not decline any requests from FIFA Ticketing/FIFA World Cup Tickets.
• If you encounter any problems, then wait for the next FIFA sales phase, or try the official resale platform, or consider hospitality packages.

In this guide, we will learn in detail about the FIFA World Cup 2026 Lottery Payment Guide: How to Avoid the "Card Declined" issue.