Preparing for the 2026 World Cup: Security Challenges and How to Tackle Them

The 2026 FIFA World Cup will be a tournament of unprecedented scale and complexity. As the first World Cup co-hosted by three countries, featuring 48 teams and expecting more than 6 million attendees across 16 stadiums, it presents security challenges that dwarf any previous sporting event. Recent incidents at major events—from crowd control failures at the Copa America final to cyber attacks during the 2024 Paris Olympics—highlight the critical need for advanced security solutions that can respond at machine speed.

For security organizations preparing for this massive undertaking, success will depend on real-time situational awareness, multi-agency coordination, and the ability to detect and respond to events before they escalate. This is where Dataminr’s AI-powered real-time event, threat & risk intelligence platform, including its groundbreaking agentic AI capability Intel Agents, becomes vital.

World Cup Security Challenges and the Role of Dataminr

Multi-City, Multi-Country Complexity

The 2026 World Cup spans 16 venues across Mexico, Canada, and the United States, with matches running for 39 days from Estadio Azteca in Mexico City to MetLife Stadium in New Jersey. Each stadium presents unique security risks, with capacities ranging from 45,000 to 94,000 attendees. FIFA President Gianni Infantino has compared this tournament to “hosting 80 major sports events”—a scale that requires unprecedented coordination.

Dataminr’s AI platform processes over 1 million data sources in 150+ languages, enabling unified situational awareness across host cities and countries. By harnessing public data instantly shared by eyewitnesses, as well as a diverse range of official and open sources, security teams can maintain a common operating picture and respond with accuracy and speed.

Legends Global (formerly ASM Global), the world’s largest venue management company overseeing over 400 venues across five continents, is using Dataminr to strengthen their security operations at multiple World Cup games. 

“There’s a lot of noise out there. Dataminr lets us really dial into the things that are important to us in our venues, and that helps us in our security planning,” said ML Henry, Legends Global VP of Corporate Security. “We want to make sure that we’re able to identify potential risks and safety concerns, and address them before they happen. Dataminr is a huge plus for us because it helps us be proactive, not reactive.”

Read More: How ASM Global Strengthens Venue Security With Dataminr

Crowd and Public Safety

Major sporting events have powerful ripple effects on public safety—both inside and outside arena walls. For example, Fan Festivals (aka fan zones) are public viewing events organized by the World Cup and host cities. In 2026, these festivals will take place in numerous locations in host cities, featuring matches on giant screens, live music, food, and other entertainment. Unofficial, fan-organized public watch parties are also likely to happen in other countries. As a result, private and public sector organizations face a mammoth task of securing public safety inside and outside event venues.

Real-time alerts before traditional news coverage are crucial. At the 2024 Copa America final, Dataminr alerted clients to thousands of ticketless fans forcibly entering Hard Rock Stadium one hour before major news coverage. These early insights, drawn from real-time eyewitness data and public posts, allowed proactive interventions and more efficient incident management, preventing harm from spreading further.

Multi-Agency Coordination Challenges

The 2026 World Cup will require seamless coordination between hundreds of local, national, and international agencies, including the White House Task Force, FBI, and their counterparts abroad.

With structured metadata and easy integration into command center workflows, Dataminr’s unified alerting system allows instantaneous sharing of critical intelligence regardless of jurisdiction. Live event briefs created by ReGenAI ensure every stakeholder has the most current and relevant context as situations evolve, no matter the time of day or team size.

Cyber Threats and Digital Vulnerabilities

Cybersecurity risks at international events are growing faster and more complex. The 2024 Paris Olympics, for example, faced more than 140 cyber attacks. With the World Cup’s heavy reliance on mobile ticketing, event apps, and digital infrastructure, organizations face a rapidly expanding attack surface. Malware, phishing, and denial-of-service (DoS) attacks can target event systems, disrupt communications, and cause major issues for stadium security and major sports events are a prime target.

Dataminr’s AI, including its new Intel Agents, continuously scans the deep and dark web, social platforms, and cybercrime forums to detect emerging digital threats. These AI agents autonomously gather, interpret, and summarize risk intelligence, dramatically speeding up incident response, triage, and real-time decision-making for cybersecurity teams. 

Learn More: AI for Preemptive Cyber Defense: Cutting Through the Noise for Greater Efficiencies

Security at Surrounding Businesses

Beyond the stadiums themselves, the 2026 World Cup will impact an interconnected web of critical sectors, including airlines, hotels, retailers, and rideshare services. With millions of fans traveling between venues, securing airports and flight operations becomes essential to prevent disruptions and respond to potential threats. 

Hotels and other lodging providers face increased risks related to overcrowding, unauthorized access, and the need for heightened vigilance against criminal activity or suspicious behavior on their premises. Retailers and service providers near event zones must be prepared for unusually high foot traffic and potential public safety incidents. Meanwhile, rideshare and public transportation services serve as lifelines for attendees—making them targets for both opportunistic crime and coordinated threats. 

These sectors all play vital roles in the broader event ecosystem, and any disruption in their operations can ripple out to affect overall event safety, fan experience, and the reputation of host cities. Coordinated security planning and full visibility into risks—enabled by real-time intelligence—across this landscape are critical for safeguarding people and infrastructure throughout the duration of the World Cup.

Weather and Environmental Risks

In 2024, officials halted the Euro 24 soccer match between Germany and Denmark when a sudden thunderstorm brought driving rain, lightning, and large hailstones. For open-air stadiums, weather events can be particularly dangerous for the players and the crowd.

For the 2026 World Cup, the major weather concerns are mostly heat-related as many of the host cities (i.e. Kansas City, Miami) are expected to experience high temperatures during the tournament. In fact, 10 of the 16 stadiums put the players and spectators at risk for severe heat stress and dehydration. 

With integrated weather sensors and automated data fusion, Dataminr delivers hyperlocal climate hazard alerts. The system instantly notifies teams of dangerous conditions—enabling organizers to activate cooling protocols, evacuation plans, or emergency responses based on up-to-the-minute data.

Strengthen Major Events Security with Dataminr

AI-Powered Real-Time Event, Threat & Risk Intelligence

Dataminr’s AI platform ingests over 43 terabytes of text, images, audio, and video each day from millions of public data points—much of it generated by eyewitnesses via mobile devices. Its advanced AI models have been specifically trained to recognize the public data patterns that signal emerging risks, ensuring that customers are first to know about any incident, wherever it unfolds.

Dataminr Intel Agents

Dataminr Intel Agents—a new form of agentic AI developed specifically for security teams—uncover and deliver the most relevant context about any global event, threat, and risk in real time. They preemptively anticipate the questions security teams might ask about any given event and deliver the answers in real time. Armed with real-time intelligence, security leaders can move from identifying the ‘what’ of a situation to understanding the ‘so what’ in seconds. This allows them to maintain situational awareness of risks at all times, quickly determine the impacts on their organization, and respond more effectively.

ReGenAI: Live Event Briefs and Generative Updates

Dataminr’s ReGenAI technology automatically creates and continuously updates live event briefs. This means security leaders—no matter their team size or the hour—always have the most accurate, current, and concise understanding of rapidly changing situations. ReGenAI condenses massive amounts of real-time information into actionable updates, helping public safety, travel security, executive protection, and operations teams act with confidence.

Multi-Modal, Multi-Source AI Fusion

Dataminr employs a suite of AI-powered detection tools:

• Audio scanners for emergency response and public safety incidents
• Computer vision to detect multi-faceted events from images and videos
• Natural language processing to monitor traditional and alternative social platforms, in 150+ languages
• Sensor and anomaly detection across weather, traffic, and infrastructure data sources

By automating the collection, fusion, and prioritization of all this input—including eyewitness updates—the platform delivers the most actionable, hyperlocal, and reliable alerts possible.

Predictive, Proactive, and Automated Response

Dataminr’s predictive AI and generative AI allow teams to:

• Identify crowd or cyber threats at their earliest signs, sometimes hours before headlines break
• Speed up incident response and triage with automatically synthesized reports and alerts
• Benchmark and stress-test their security plans using data from major recent events (gathered during a series of customer exercises leading up to the World Cup)
• Ensure recommendations are not just reactive but prevent incidents before they escalate

Products for Corporate and Government Stakeholders

Our end-to-end Dataminr Pulse for Corporate Security solution is purpose-built for corporate security teams—travel security managers, executive protection agents, sponsors, and partners who need to protect people and assets globally. For public sector agencies, Dataminr First Alert is already trusted by major government clients to provide critical public safety alerts and support timely first response, maximizing event safety and continuity.

With just eight months until the 2026 World Cup, organizations need to pivot now to AI-powered, real-time intelligence solutions that harness public data and generative live event briefs. By leveraging Dataminr’s unprecedented scale and automation, security leaders can make proactive, well-informed decisions in minutes rather than hours—turning overwhelming complexity into manageable action and keeping millions of attendees safe.