FIFA has revealed that its Social Media Protection Service (SMPS) detected more than 89,000 abusive posts and comments during the group stage of the 2026 FIFA World Cup after analysing over six million pieces of content.
According to FIFA’s latest report, approximately 225,000 posts and comments were flagged for human review, while around 1,000 accounts have been escalated for further investigation. Moderation efforts also led to the automatic hiding of nearly 181,000 hateful comments across team accounts.
Racially motivated abuse accounted for 11% of all detected online abuse during the tournament’s group stage, making it the largest category of discriminatory content identified by the service. FIFA noted that this represents a three-percentage-point increase compared with the equivalent stage of the 2022 FIFA World Cup.
The organisation warned that racial abuse has become a persistent threat to the wellbeing of players and other football stakeholders, describing the trend as increasingly concerning despite improvements in detection technology.
SMPS is available to players, coaches, match officials and participating teams at FIFA competitions, helping protect them and their followers from discriminatory and offensive online content. The service also gathers evidence for law enforcement agencies, with FIFA confirming that more than 100 cases from the group stage have reached the threshold for potential legal action.
Between 11 and 27 June, a total of 2.03 million comments were moderated, including spam, bot-generated content and messages posted by fake accounts. FIFA said this represents a fourfold increase compared with the same stage of Qatar 2022.
Since its launch in 2022, FIFA’s Social Media Protection Service has removed or moderated more than 30 million abusive posts and comments in over 50 languages across major social media platforms.
Through its ongoing No Racism campaign, FIFA is encouraging supporters to listen to the experiences of those affected by racial abuse, challenge discriminatory behaviour whenever it occurs and actively support efforts to combat racism in football.