Fifa to let fans bring bottled water to World Cup, but with some caveats | World News

By Michael Smith

Fifa is offering assurances to New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani that fans may bring water into World Cup stadiums — within certain rules.

Mamdani raised concerns Thursday about reports that Fifa had banned fans from bringing bottles of water to World Cup matches, demanding answers from Fifa. 

On Friday, one of Fifa’s top executives, World Cup 2026 Chief Operating Officer Heimo Schirgi, paused during a tour of his tournament operations center in Miami to try to provide some answers. He turned his attention to three water bottles that had been pre-positioned on a desk to his left, television cameras rolling.

“First, what we meant to do when we changed the policy was to avoid these type of containers into a stadium, you know, which can be really dangerous if they’re thrown,” said Schirgi, holding up one metal and one hard plastic reusable bottle. “But, if you show up to the stadium with this,” he said, grasping a filled, 500 ml disposable bottle of water. “You will be allowed to bring this in.”

He said up to 20-ounce sealed bottles of water would be allowed at all matches in US and Canadian stadiums once the World Cup begins in a week. There are still some legal issues to deal with in Mexico before such a policy can be implemented, he said, without going into details.

The confusion came out of a revised version of Fifa’s 35-page Stadium Code of Conduct, which states that reusable water bottles would not be allowed in stadiums because they can be thrown by fans. Previous rules allowed fans to bring empty reusable plastic bottles to matches.

In New York, Mamdani, a notorious soccer fan (his favorite team is Arsenal), reacted quickly to the water rule change, saying he would check into it with Fifa, The Athletic reported.

“We don’t want anyone to be skimping on water because of the cost of the water at the stadium that otherwise they would be drinking,” Mamdani said in a video interview. “We want to make it easy,” he said, pausing to take a sip from a glass of water, “to drink some water.”

Worries about how the high heat of the North American summer in cities like Miami will impact players led Fifa to mandate water breaks during games. The global union professional football players union — FIFPRO — recommends postponing play if temperature levels climb too high. Fifa also said it’s taking precautions like providing drinks, cold towels and shade to meet teams’ needs on match days.

Schirgi said those concerns also include taking steps to protect fans from high heat. 

“You know, the health and safety of our spectators is our foremost objective,” he said.