The 2026 FIFA World Cup is delivering a sharp but uneven economic jolt to host and participating nations. In Mexico, the restaurant industry projects a 29 per cent surge in sales during the tournament, generating an estimated 112,200 temporary jobs and an additional $562 million in revenue. Yet this bonanza is far from universal: more than a thousand restaurants in Mexico City’s commercial corridors have reported significant losses, as street closures, match-day logistics, and protests by groups such as the national teachers’ union block access for customers. The result is a tale of two economies — one buoyed by football fever, the other stifled by the very infrastructure of celebration.

Across the Pacific, Indonesia’s experience mirrors this duality. Public viewing events, or nobar, have sprung up in hundreds of locations from Central Java to South Kalimantan, providing a lifeline for micro and small enterprises. Street vendors, food stalls, and merchandise sellers have seen a brisk uptick in trade, with one national broadcaster estimating a potential economic spin-off of 2.34 trillion rupiah. However, economists in Jakarta caution that this is a seasonal sugar rush, not a structural remedy. The boost is concentrated in the informal sector and will dissipate once the final whistle blows, leaving no lasting improvement to the underlying challenges facing local businesses.

Beyond the balance sheets, the tournament has become a stage for geopolitical theatre. Viewed from Bogotá, the World Cup is a reminder that football’s unifying rhetoric often masks deeper tensions. The bid was conceived under a banner of North American unity, yet the reality has included protests in Mexico City and the lingering shadow of past US threats against its southern neighbour. For Colombia, a nation navigating its own post-electoral divisions, the tournament offers a temporary respite from political polarisation, but also underscores how the sport is increasingly a proxy for international power dynamics.

Looking ahead, the World Cup’s legacy will be defined less by aggregate revenue figures than by how host governments manage the friction between celebration and dissent. The logistical strains and social protests in Mexico City are a warning that mega-events can amplify existing grievances. Meanwhile, the modest, transient gains in Indonesia suggest that for non-host nations, the economic halo effect is real but fleeting. As the tournament progresses, the challenge for all involved is to harness the unifying potential of the beautiful game without allowing its glow to obscure the structural and political fissures it so often reveals.